Legal battles drive VidAngel to Chap. 11 bankruptcy filing

VidAngel, a Provo-based movie and TV series filtering company locked in legal battles with several studios, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Neal Harmon, chief executive officer, said in announcing the filing that the company will continue to offer its filtering service and add new content and customers.

“It’s an important step to protect our company — as well as its creditors, investors and customers — from the plaintiffs’ efforts to deny families their legal right to watch filtered content on modern devices,” Harmon said of the filing.

{mprestriction ids="1,3"}“It also gives us breathing room to reorganize our business around the new streaming platform, promote and perfect the new technology, and seek a legal determination that the new system is fully legal and not subject to the preliminary injunction entered in California.

VidAngel was launched in 2014 with the goal of making mainstream movies more accessible to faith-based audiences. The original service used DVD copies of Hollywood releases to filter out language and nudity. But last December, a federal judge ordered VidAngel to shut down at the request of some studios, which have argued that the unauthorized service violates their copyrights.

The company has been in ongoing legal battles after being sued by Disney, 20th Century Fox, Lucasfilm, Warner Bros, New Line Cinema, Marvel and Turner Entertainment. They contend that the 2005 Family Movie Act — which permits filtering in the home — does not apply to modern devices and should remain legal only for outdated technology. VidAngel disagrees. It said the Chapter 11 filing “represents another legal step to protect the future of filtering.”

In June, VidAngel announced a service allowing users to filter language, nudity, violence and other content from movies and TV series on Netflix, Amazon Prime and HBO and available on streaming platforms such as iOS, Android, and ROKU.

“It’s important for our fans to know that VidAngel will continue to offer our filtering service, and to add new content and new customers during the reorganization process,” Harmon said when the Chapter 11 filing occurred. “We are also actively hiring additional engineers to further accelerate the continued development of VidAngel.”

Harmon noted that “we still have millions in the bank to fight this all the way.”

VidAngel also offers original content from VidAngel Studios, launched in January. Its signature series is “Dry Bar Comedy,” featuring clean standup comedy.{/mprestriction}