With last week's big announcement about My Dead Friend Zoe (Ed Harris, Sonequa Martin-Green and Natalie Morales joining the cast), we thought it was worthwhile to share the video below. It now needs to be updated to reflect the new cast members, but in the meantime it's a wonderful introduction to writer/director Kyle Hausmann-Stokes and a reminder of why we fell in love with this project in the first place.

When you invest in Legion M, you own a stake in the company and every project on our slate. It's been over 8 months since we first announced My Dead Friend Zoe as a development project, but the video above shows why we work so hard to push this project forward ever day. Aside from being entertaining (which every movie needs to be) this is an important film with an important message. Kyle is the perfect person to tell it, and we couldn't be more excited and proud to see the progress he and the team have made.

Onward and Upward!

Paul, Jeff, and the Legion M team

***Risk vs Reward***

Early stage investments like Legion M are speculative, illiquid and involve a high degree of risk. Statistically, most early stage companies fail, so you should never invest more than you can afford to lose.

But with risk comes potential for reward. If you can afford $40 to take a shot at making history, we'd love to have you join our team. Every great company begins with investors willing to take a chance on something that's never been done.

Read the Offering Circular and risks related to this offering before investing. This Reg A+ offering is made available through StartEngine Primary, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC.

Deadline broke the news this morning and we couldn’t be more excited to share our first cast attachments including the immensely talented, four-time Oscar-nominated Ed Harris (known for Westworld, Apollo 13, and Pollock), the dynamic starship captain Sonequa Martin-Green (renowned for Star Trek: Discovery, The Walking Dead, and Space Jam), and the versatile and hilarious Natalie Morales (notable for No Hard Feelings, Language Lessons, and Parks & Rec).

For those who may have missed earlier updates, My Dead Friend Zoe is a gripping and emotional dark comedy from talented writer and director Kyle Hausmann-Stokes. Kyle is an award-winning filmmaker, a Bronze Star veteran of Iraq, a USC film graduate, a former paratrooper, a co-founder of Veterans in Media and Entertainment, and a creative visionary.

A freshly original script, the film expertly navigates the delicate balance between humor and drama, chronicling our protagonist's profound journey of self-discovery and the meaningful emotional connections she forges along the way. Inspired by films like CODA, Fight Club, and Nebraska, this project possesses immense potential both in terms of entertainment and commercial success.

Beyond its artistic merits, we are proud that this film sheds light on veterans and female soldiers in a fresh and compelling way, while delivering a powerful social message about mental health and suicide prevention. Each of our cast attachments have responded enthusiastically to the script, and we have already received positive interest from buyers and distributors.

In addition, this project represents the latest example of Legion M’s “leveling up” from a company that makes small investments in other people’s projects to one that develops and produces projects of our own. The business ramifications of this (which are illustrated in this blog post) have potential to be very significant. More to come on that in a future update.

In the meantime, please take a moment to check out Legion M’s Round 9 Offering on StartEngine. When you invest in Legion M you are joining over 40,000 shareholders (a number which is growing every day) to own a stake in My Dead Friend Zoe, along with ALL the projects on the Legion M slate. We’re growing faster than ever, and with projects like this, there’s never been a better time to invest in Legion M!

____________________________________________

***Risk vs Reward***

Early stage investments like Legion M are speculative, illiquid and involve a high degree of risk. Statistically, most early stage companies fail, so you should never invest more than you can afford to lose.

But with risk comes potential for reward. If you can afford $40 to take a shot at making history, we'd love to have you join our team. Every great company begins with investors willing to take a chance on something that's never been done.

Read the Offering Circular and risks related to this offering before investing. This Reg A+ offering is made available through StartEngine Primary, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC.

Our release plans for the William Shatner documentary "You Can Call Me Bill" are coming into focus. We announced a month or two ago that we'd partnered with XYZ Films as our sales agent for North America (US and Canada), and today we're pleased to announce a partnership with Blue Finch Releasing as our sales agent for the rest of the world.

Read the exclusive announcement on Variety.

If you are unfamiliar with the term "Sales Agent", the best analogy is a real estate agent. The same way you'd hire a realtor to sell your house, you hire a sales agent to sell your film. Whereas the job of a real estate agent is bringing buyers to your house, a sales agent is responsible for taking your film out to buyers. This can include everyone from massive international companies like Netflix that buy rights for the entire world, all the way to down to small local distributors responsible for getting your film seen in over 40 territories around the world.

The first opportunity for Blue Finch will come next week at the Cannes film festival, where film buyers/sellers from around the world congregate at one of the largest international markets of the year. Blue Finch will be meeting with buyers and -- thanks to a partnership with technology company Proto, Legion M is beaming Bill into Cannes as a "hologram" via one of their super cool volumetric displays. (If that last sentence doesn't make sense to you, don't fret -- we'll share some pics or vids in a later update). 

Stay tuned for more updates on distribution (including info on our plans in the US) coming soon. In the meantime, please join us in welcoming BlueFinch into the Legion M family, and wish them luck next week in Cannes!

Onward and Upward!

-Jeff, Paul, and the Legion M Team 

We are beyond thrilled to share details on the world premiere of This Is Not Financial Advice at the Tribeca Film Festival. It's been an exciting year, as we look to continue this upward momentum in New York, NY. Can you join us? 

The premiere will take place at the artistically-vibrant Chelsea neighborhood SVA Theatre on Saturday, June 10 at 2:00pm ET.

Two additional screenings will be shown at AMC 19th St East 6 on Monday, June 12 and Thursday, June 15 both showtimes beginning at 8:45pm ET.

VISIT THE TRIBECA FILM SITE TO GET YOUR TICKETS!

*****

In addition to the public sale of festival tickets, Legion M has a very limited number of tickets available to the premiere (and potential afterparty) reserved for investors only. If you're interested in attending the premiere (or already have plans to go to Tribeca) visit the link below and answer a few quick questions for us:

 I WANT IN!

Please feel free to reach out to team@legionm.com if you need any further assistance.

Onward & Upward!

It’s been seven years since Legion M burst onto the entertainment scene with our first-of-its-kind business model and we want to take a moment to reflect on what we're building together, why it matters now, and examine the great potential it has as we keep growing.

As we have stated many times, Legion M’s number one priority has been and continues to be the growth of our community. Growth is the most critical key to our long-term success — even more important than revenue or any other metric at this phase. A large community of engaged and passionate entertainment fans is the ultimate fuel for our fly-wheel, and is so important that we even built the premise into the company's M̅ logo (the M with a bar over it is the Roman numeral for one million). This update will help explain why we are so obsessed with growth.

In the past several years, our community has grown from a small but engaged group of a few thousand investors to multiple thousands, then tens of thousands, then multiple tens of thousands to where we are today with over 40,000 and fast approaching 50,000. As one of the largest equity crowdfunding communities in the space, we are happy and proud of the success we have had, especially noting that we continued to grow through the pandemic and have been seeing signs of acceleration in the growth curve. We believe these trends could accelerate even more as we become more well known and gain access to bigger and better projects.

However, the growth of our shareholders is just one dimension of the importance of our community. The true value is derived from the engagement and meaningful impact our community has on the business and how that results in benefits to all shareholders. From the outset, our active community has been a valuable asset for Legion M, providing advantages at every stage of the process. This value goes beyond merely supporting our projects when they release, it begins at the earliest stages of the process — including discovery — where the community has the ability to help us find and discover projects like Defiant, but also to inject momentum and build grassroots support before a project is even greenlit. The impact can also extend to the very important financing and greenlighting stages, and continue all the way into helping achieve a buzzworthy and successful release. Meaningful engagement and impact in all three of these stages — discovery, financing, and release — makes Legion M a burgeoning triple threat in the entertainment industry.

As evidenced by the examples and data below, the measurable impact that our community has on our projects at different stages is not only significant today, but more importantly, when used as a tool for projecting the potential impact as our community expands, reveals some incredibly exciting visions of what we could achieve at scale. 

The Power To Inject Early Momentum Into A Project

Let’s start at the beginning of a project before it goes into production. In late 2019 we produced a comic book title for a film we are producing titled Girl With No Name. At the time we had about 16K investors . Leaning primarily on our community for presales of the comic, we were able to generate over $130K making it one of the most backed single comic books in Kickstarter history. Not only did this provide a nice influx of revenue to the company and help offset our development expenses, but it was a fantastic example of how the power of our community added value and momentum to the film project, giving new life to the financing prospects for the film itself.

Today, we have nearly 3x as many investors which could reasonably suggest the potential for increased revenue, if revenue were to increase linearly with the growth, a single comic book from Legion M could potentially generate hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Looking ahead and extrapolating to if/when we reach our goal of one million investors, our community would be 62.5 times bigger than when we did the Girl With No Name book. Scaling the numbers linearly could result in millions of dollars in pre-sales for a book like this which could literally lead to a potential bestseller and one of the top-selling comic books in the country. However, it is important to note that it remains to be seen if our growth will scale linearly or just increase substantially. Either way, this is all still very good news for Legion M.

The Power To Independently Finance And Greenlight A Project

While it is never expected and always optional, in our survey outreach, many of our Legion M shareholders expressed a strong interest in making direct investments into specific projects as a compliment to their Legion M investment and with the goal of achieving shorter-term ROI.

In June of 2021 we did an early experiment with direct investments into a Legion M project with our partnership with OneDoor Studios, and invited our community to invest directly into the development of the feature film script for Calculated. At that time, we had about 30K investors and with a few emails and social posts, we were able to raise over $500K from our community for the Calculated project in just a few short weeks.

Fast forward to this year where we did another experiment with direct investments, this time to fully finance our William Shatner documentary, You Can Call Me Bill, with our innovative Fan-First Financing Structure. With 40K investors we were able to raise more than $800K (including the wait list) in just a matter of days and likely would have raised north of $1M if we had kept the round open and offered it beyond the initial group of reservation holders. The offering sold out before we got the chance to issue the press release announcing the round was open or Bill was able to tweet to his 2.5MM twitter followers. Soon after raising this capital we announced the film had been accepted to the prestigious SXSW festival for its world premiere, where it received great reviews (the film is currently 100% on Rotten Tomatoes with 10 critical reviews). As we now enter the monetization phase, we expect this project will provide income to the film’s investors and Legion M for years to come.

Using these two examples and doing some simple math again to extrapolate to one million investors, the numbers if scaled linearly are truly spectacular. At one million investors, Legion M would be 25 times the size we were when we did You Can Call Me Bill and 33 times the size we were when we did Calculated. If we scale those numbers and are able to maintain engagement, it’s not hard to imagine Legion M having the capability to greenlight projects with budgets of tens of millions of dollars with just a few emails.

The Power To Drive Revenue And Monetize Our Projects

Let’s keep going into the prime stage of impact — when we release a project. In 2018 we introduced a Legion M project titled Mandy with a day and date release via RLJ. For those that know the industry, a day and date release is typically released in just a handful of theaters with a minimal amount of marketing (if any at all). Being in theaters is primarily a way of helping drive the premium rental price for VOD. At the time we released Mandy, Legion M had about 8K investors and with our community driving the majority of the marketing and grassroots awareness for the film, we quite literally blew away all expectations, ultimately driving over $1.2M in box office alone (Read: Surprise Theatrical Success of Mandy). We can’t take credit for all the revenue, but we know we played a massive role in helping it reach its breakout success and we have continued to drive revenues for that project ever since.

Fast forward to this year, Legion M has grown to over 40K investors and recently teamed up with Fathom Events to bring The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King back to theaters. Again, the results were way beyond the early expectations, driving over $1.2M in box office in the first night alone, out-performing movies like Air, Renfield and The Pope’s Exorcist despite the fact those films were on 2-3X the number of screens. Now granted, The Lord of the Rings is a big franchise with a large fan base so we can’t take all the credit, but the film did not get a lot of marketing support beyond what Legion M, Fathom Events, and Lost Odyssey did. It's also a 20 year old movie, readily available on streaming, Blu-ray, and DVD, so we believe a substantial part of the success is coming from the engagement and awareness made possible with our community.

Using these two examples and extrapolating out to one million investors, Legion M would be 125 times the size we were for Mandy and 25 times the size were for the Fathom Events release. With this in mind and again, assuming the numbers scale, one could imagine a scenario where the Legion M community could help drive up to $25-100M in box office for just one project.

Looking ahead, it's clear that the Legion M community will only continue to grow and become even more impactful. As the entertainment industry evolves, the importance of having a passionate and engaged community adding value at every stage of a project just simply cannot be overstated.

Our dedication to growth and excitement for the future stems from the fact that each new investor milestone we achieve unlocks new potential and widens the gap between us and the competition. With 50K investors in our sights and 100K up soon after, we are honing our ability to make books best-sellers or to flash-fund films without any dependence on others, and then to drive substantial revenue through the power of our own community — this is what we are building and why we believe Legion M has the potential to be one of the most influential companies in Hollywood.

Onward & Upward!

*****

Help Legion M grow by sharing our Round 9 details with any entertainment fans you know, or by forwarding this email to them. Together we can put a Legion M-sized dent in the universe!

Read the Offering Circular and risks related to Legion M’s offering before investing. This Reg A+ offering is made available through StartEngine Primary, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC. These investments are speculative, illiquid, and involve a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment. You should never invest more than you can afford to lose in Legion M (or any equity crowdfunding offering).

*****

This email may contain forward-looking statements and information relating to, among other things, the company, its business plan and strategy, and its industry. These forward-looking statements are based on the beliefs of, assumptions made by, and information currently available to the company’s management. When used in the offering materials, the words “estimate,” “project,” “believe,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “expect” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, which constitute forward looking statements. These statements reflect management’s current views with respect to future events and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the company’s actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date on which they are made. The company does not undertake any obligation to revise or update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after such date or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

We get a lot of questions when we're out talking about Legion M. Hopefully you do too! If so, we want to arm you with responses to frequently asked questions like the one below.

If you have a question you'd like to see answered in a post like this -- please send mail to team@legionm.com.  

QUESTION: If you've got all these highly paid celebrities involved, why do you need MY money?

SHORT ANSWER: Great question. The answer is that your money is not what's most important. It's YOU.

LONG ANSWER: First off, we hope it's clear that we're not asking for donations. We're uniting fans to OWN a piece of Hollywood, not contribute to it. The whole goal is for the company to be successful so you MAKE money from this deal. I.e. imagine if you had been one of the early investors in Disney when they were just getting started...

It's a super risky investment. Every company WANTS to be the next Disney, but most end up being the next Quibi -- a company that raised $1.75 billion from big investors but couldn't get off the ground and went out of business a couple years later. The fact is, most startups fail, and if that happens to Legion M you'll likely lose your investment. That's why we've made the minimum just $40 - so folks can take a swing without breaking the bank. 

That said, with risk comes potential for reward. We think Legion M is a big idea, and what makes it a big idea is YOU.

That's because YOU are the one with power in Hollywood. You buy the tickets, pay the subscriptions, and decide what to watch. Individually your choices don't matter, but there are a lot of people just like you, and TOGETHER we’re responsible for powering a multi-trillion dollar global industry.

Legion M’s mission is to harness that power, and give all of us a chance to own a piece of it. When you invest in Legion M you are buying stock in the company - for as little as $40 you can join more than 40,000 shareholders with a stake in the company's success, a voice in helping decide what gets produced, and a chance to be a part of making history.

If this sounds interesting, please check out our offering at startengine.com/legionm and let us know what you think. If you aren't sure, you are welcome to join as a free member at legionm.com/join-legion-m. As a free member you don't own any stake in the company, but can still be part of what we're trying to do. There's no better way to see first hand what Legion M is all about.

***RISK VS REWARD***

Early stage investments like Legion M are speculative, illiquid and involve a high degree of risk. Statistically, most early stage companies fail, so you should never invest more than you can afford to lose.

But with risk comes potential for reward. If you can afford $40 to take a shot at making history, we'd love to have you join our team. Every great company begins with investors willing to take a chance on something that's never been done.

Read the Offering Circular (https://bit.ly/r9-oc) and risks (https://bit.ly/r9-risks) related to this offering before investing. This Reg A+ offering is made available through StartEngine Primary, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC.

They say opinions are like elbows -- everyone has them and nobody cares about yours. That's not true though. Legion M cares deeply about yours.

That's because as a company owned by fans, we want to utilize your wisdom, passion, and experience. We believe our community is a lot smarter than we are (which is not really saying that much...), and that by finding creative ways to harness the "wisdom of the crowd" we can make better decisions for the benefit the company and all it's shareholders.

One area where your opinions are particularly relevant is the evaluation of movies. There's no "right" answer of course -- I may hate something and you may love it...and we can both be correct. However, in aggregate the opinions of the audience can be the difference between success and failure for a film.

One challenge with evaluating movies is the lack of a commonly accepted scale. Whether you are dealing with two thumbs up, a fresh vs. rotten tomato or 4.5 out of 5 star review, there's a lack of uniformity in ratings scales. If you give something 5 out of 5 stars is that because the movie is amazing, or because you are an easy grader? Is my 4 out of 5 the exact same as your 8 out of 10? What do you do when you think something is a 3.5 but you are forced to select a 3 or 4?

To address these problems we humbly propose the Official Legion M Rating Scale. This is what we use internally to ensure our ratings are apples to apples. We thought it was worth sharing for feedback.

Ratings are based on the following 5 point scale. Fractional scores are allowed (and yes, 3.786 is a valid rating for those that are so inclined).

5 - Excellent. One of the best movies you've seen in the past year. By definition, this should be a very small number of elite films -- the best of the best.

4 - Very Good. A movie you would recommend to most* of your friends. The number of films that fall into this category probably depends on how selective you are...both with your movies and your friends. For most people this equates to the top 20% of the movies they see.

3.14 - A movie that's particularly good with ice-cream.

3 - Average. An average movie is neither good nor bad. It just exists. This is the fat part of the bell curve, and for most people will represent 50% - 60% of the films they see.

2 - Bad. A movie you would warn most* of your friends to avoid. Once again, the number of films that fall into this category probably depends on your outlook and disposition. If you find more than 10%-20% of the movies you watch are 2s, we recommend you find a better way to choose movies. Or a good therapist.

1 - Horrible. A movie you hate with a white-hot passion. Hopefully you don't end up with too many of these in your life, but when you do we recommend following up immediately with a 3.14 rated movie to get the bad taste out of your mouth.

*****Note that we say "most" of your friends. That's because we know you hang out one or two weirdos that will love all your 1s and 2s, and the one grouch that will hate all your 4s and 5s Don't sweat it -- this is art after all. How boring life would be if we all liked the same things!

That's our proposal -- feel free to tell us what you think by emailing team@legionm.com! And feel free to rate it on whatever scale you choose.

It's been an exciting year already, and now we have even more good news! As reported by IndieWire, This Is Not Financial Advice, which Legion M is executive producing along with Optimist, will be having its world premiere at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival in New York on June 10th. Legion M is an equity investor and executive producer on the project, which means that we have a stake in film. 

This Is Not Financial Advice explores the psychology of investing through the story of the "Dogecoin Millionaire" (a guy who cashed out his life savings to invest in a joke cryptocurrency) and a generation of new investors powered by the internet and social media. In addition to being wildly entertaining, the documentary serves as an informative look at the investment landscape of today, contrasting some of the wildly different strategies investors employ as they attempt to conquer it.

We are thrilled at this news and can't wait to share more of this film's journey with you, including details on possible opportunities to attend the premiere!

Onward and Upward!

*****

Join Over 40,000 Investors In Legion M

Read the Offering Circular and risks related to Legion M’s Round 9 Offering before investing in that offering. The Round 9 Offering is a Reg A+ offering made available through StartEngine Primary, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC. These investments are speculative, illiquid, and involve a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment. You should never invest more than you can afford to lose in Legion M or any equity crowdfunding offering.

Here's a fun Saturday update! Thursday night's screenings of "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" (see our earlier updates for info on Legion M's role on these screenings) were a huge hit! IndieWire reports that we were #2 in the nation Thursday, outgrossing movies like Air, Renfied, and The Pope's Exorcist despite the fact that those films were on 2x - 3x the number of screens. 

It just goes to show that when fans unite, we move the needle!

It also speaks to the power of theatrical releases. This movie is currently available in living rooms via HBO Max. That fact that so many of us chose to suit up and pay to see it in a theater speaks volumes.

If you missed Thursday night, there's still time! The film has been so popular Fathom added a bunch more showings through Wed of next week -- including some important weekend afternoon dates for folks with earlier bedtimes! Check out showtimes and get your tickets today!

FOR FRODO!

Today marks the beginning of the 20th Anniversary screenings of The Return of the King. The reception has been outstanding – what started as a single night event at a few hundred theaters has exploded into screenings at more than 1,000 theaters over 7 full days. While many of the screenings are sold out, new screens and showtimes keep popping up. If the showing you want to see is sold out, call the theater and ask them to add another screen! Especially if you have a gaggle of hobbits or orcs you can bring to the party…

Legion M is proud to be a part of this event, in partnership with Warner Bros, Fathom Events and Lost Odyssey. We put up some of the money required to get these films into theaters and partnered with Lost Odyssey to provide the bonus footage (featuring Elijah Wood) that will play in conjunction with the film. In exchange, we get a percentage of all ticket sales, meaning that Legion M earns revenue from every ticket sold.

Just as importantly, the opportunity to work with a specialty distributor like Fathom Events, a major studio like Warner Bros, and a wonderful partner like Lost Odyssey are all great steps as Legion M continues to “level up” on our quest to DO GREAT THINGS!

The business of theatrical releases has been completely upended over the past 5 years and we expect it will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. Trends that began with the rise of streaming dramatically accelerated when the entire industry shut down during the pandemic. Today, theaters are continuing to feel the effect of supply chain disruptions (the movies you see in theaters today are typically the result of what people were working on 1-3 years ago), while the “experience economy” comes roaring back with people hungry for social experiences after the isolation of COVID. These are the sort of dynamics that can be extremely disruptive for large entrenched businesses...but have potential to be great opportunities for small, nimble companies like Legion M. We’re excited to be in the mix, learning all we can and trying to make the most of it!

So with that in mind, we encourage you to take a look at the showtimes near you, round up some friends, and go see one of the most epic action adventure movies of all time the way it was meant to be seen: ON THE BIG SCREEN. It’s been 20 years since the initial release – who knows when you’ll get a chance like this again!

Finally, when you go to the show, be sure to GET THERE EARLY. They have a great pre show (including a Legion M video!), and Fathom Events start at the designated time. I.e. If showtime is 7:30, it starts at 7:30, not at 7:55 after 25 minutes of trailers.

 
Onward and Upward!

PS: Want to help spread the word? Be sure to share the link (https://hubs.la/Q01K3mq_0) and tag @legionmofficial.

Top 5 reasons to join Legion M for the 20th anniversary screening of The Return of the King:

1. It's an EPIC movie that won 11 Oscars, including Best Picture
2. This is a film that NEEDS TO BE SEEN ON THE BIG SCREEN! (read this Collider article to see why)
3. Movies are better with friends -- find your Fellowship!
4. A portion of revenue from every ticket sold goes to Legion M, supporting fans uniting to reshape the future of film and TV!
5. It’s been 20 years since release….how long until you get a chance like this again?

Get your tickets today at The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King 20th Anniversary | Fathom Events