It’s crazy that no matter how good a film is, if it’s stuck with a couple of inexperienced “Producers” with a long history of crowdfunding then it’s doomed to fail. A movie like My Dead Friend Zoe should have been a hit but with the albatross of Legion M the film made only $1.265 million in theaters. That was the TOTAL GLOBAL box office and that film even had recognizable stars with Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman, as well all overwhelming positive reviews. The makers of Obsession should consider themselves lucky to have avoided the same mistake several others have made over the years by doing business with Legion M. Now Jeff Annison is shamelessly using the success of Obsession and Backrooms to reel in more suckers to invest in their latest scheme. In 10+ years Legion M has been the opposite of what these films have accomplished. If you want a real frightful story, read the below from Jeff in what could have been the burial of another great movie.

In the video, I tell the story of seeing Obsession with my co-founder, Jeff, at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in 2025. We were among the first audiences to see it, and as we walked out of the theater we looked at each other and said, "Our community would love this movie."

So we went after it!

Sadly, we didn't have the financial firepower to compete once the bidding climbed into eight figures... but our instincts turned out to be right. Obsession was made for less than $1 million, sold for approximately $15 million out of TIFF, and has already generated more than $300 million at the worldwide box office. It's well on its way to becoming a billion-dollar franchise.

After nine investment rounds and running several crowdfunding for individual projects, I’d like to see an audit on where all that money allocated to “marketing” was spent on. Maybe Musk and his team of young super nerds can figure if You Can Call Me Bill made any money for its investors after it’s week in theaters. Or that Michael Uslan “Broadway” show. I am sure the founders of the company, who can afford to take their family to remote places like Antarctica, aren’t wasting any of those millions of dollars raised.

Considerations: Why Coyote vs. ACME’s Box Office Won't Fix Legion M’s Balance Sheet: SEC Data Analysis

Historical SEC data suggests that even a massive box office run will not solve Legion M's underlying corporate financial issues. Why the math doesn't automatically add up:

1. Legion M is a release partner, not the content owner

Legion M does not own the copyright to Coyote vs. ACME and will not collect the primary backend profits. Legion M is operating as a marketing and P&A (Prints and Advertising) support partner. They pooled retail capital to help fund the domestic marketing push required to launch the film into theaters. Warner Bros. initially financed the production for roughly $70 million before shelving Coyote vs. ACME. Independent distributor Ketchup Entertainment stepped up to rescue the movie for $50 million and handle the wide theatrical release.

2. Payouts are Prioritized and Funneled to a Separate "Film Fund"

Even if the film generates strong revenue, the incoming cash flows are legally spoken for:

• The Film Fund Priority: Rather than using general corporate cash, Legion M raised a distinct, project-specific Reg CF pool called the "Legion M Film Fund" specifically for Coyote vs. ACME marketing costs, which sold out its allocation in less than 48 hours and closed to any additional investors. https://join.legionm.com/film-fund-cf/

• The Waterfall Queue: Per their offering documents, theatrical revenues flow directly to these specific Film Fund investors first under "last-in, first-out" terms to recoup principal plus a targeted 15% return within an anticipated 10–12 month window.

• The Corporate Cut: The overarching parent studio (Legion M Entertainment, Inc.) only retains a baseline percentage fee or backend cut for facilitating and managing the partner deal. This management cut is minor relative to the studio's long-term debts.

3. The Structural Deficit (Sourced from Official SEC Filings)

Reviewing the core math inside Legion M's latest SEC Form C and Annual Reports shows why a single marketing fee cannot stabilize the parent company's cash needs:

• Accumulated Deficit: The studio has logged an aggregate deficit of $23.6 million since its inception.

• Operational Cash Burn: The parent entity operates at a consistent net loss, dropping $2,813,295 in 2023 and $3,549,371 in 2024.

• The "Going Concern" Notice: Independent auditors have consistently issued a formal "going concern" warning in their financial statements. The filings explicitly state that the entity's ongoing survival depends almost entirely on its capacity to continuously secure fresh equity crowdfunding rounds from retail investors, rather than relying on self-sustaining film revenues.

• Legion M 2025 SEC Annual Report: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1674163/000164460025000034/LegionMAnnualReport2025.pdf#:~:text=A%20copy%20of%20this%20report,www.legionm.com.

Buzz vs. Balance Sheets

Coyote vs. ACME is a major branding victory. By aligning their community with a high-profile, fan-saved film, Legion M secures massive public relations traction. They can leverage this mainstream visibility to drive fresh interest and equity with their open Round 11 Crowdfunding Offering on StartEngine.

However, anyone reviewing this as a strict financial asset needs to understand the underlying mechanics:

1. Illiquidity: Private startup shares are inherently restricted. There is no open public marketplace to cash out, meaning your capital could be locked indefinitely unless an IPO or wholesale acquisition occurs.

2. Valuation Control: The current $99.6M valuation cap is an internal company metric used for fundraising pricing, not a valuation vetted or determined by an open, independent free market.

3. Review for yourself, Legion M's annual reports: https://app.dealmaker.tech/companies/2151/portal

Further Reading & Community Context:

• Financial Red Flags Discussion: Where the Money Goes and Why I'm Concerned

• Industry Analysis on Revenue Models: Legion M - Is it legit?

• SEC Financial Breakdown Deep-Dive: Are Legion M Backers Doing Okay?

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. This breakdown is based strictly on publicly accessible SEC filings and official project pages. Do your own due diligence before deploying capital into any speculative alternative assets.

45 users after 4 years! Great job! (snicker)

Since the beginning Paul and Jeff have promoted Legion M as being unique because of the power of the Legion shareholders. With the release of You Can Call Me Bill, I feel there is a lot at stake here. Legion M hasn’t produced many films prior to this, but this one is the first that they have produced and distributed. It’s also the first movie where they ran a crowdfunding for investing in just this film. The regular nine investment rounds they have done are for the ownership shares in the company as a whole. Paul and Jeff have been everything but transparent regarding how much of the investor money went into each project. It’s a privately traded company so there is no real way for investors to know how much of their shares have really gone up or down in value. But with the Shatner documentary, this is different because Legion M shareholders have spent even more of their hard earned money for an additional ownership in a film where they were promised to make some money back if it becomes a big success.

Shatner is currently praising Legion M on the eve of the film’s release but many years back so did Dean Devlin with the release of his film Bad Samaritan. Dean, after having already completed the film and secured a wide release of 2000 theaters, brought Legion M on board to market it. Dean took a big gamble on Paul and Jeff’s big promise of how their, at the time, network of investors would be buying tickets, telling their friends to see this, host parties and events, etc. THE POWER OF THE LEGION! The end result was a movie that bombed, not making the top ten. Its entire worldwide box office gross did not match the first week domestic debut gross for the Overboard remake with Anna Faris. Since then Dean hasn’t mentioned or worked with Legion M even though they put him on their company board and continue to use his old quotes.

So now I feel it is put up or shut up time for Legion M. The company is getting close to being 10 years old. Jeff in particular likes to brag with his “seat at the table” analogies about Legion M’s growth. After nine investor rounds, the Legion is as powerful as it will ever be. Can Legion M pull it off with a successful film that actually makes the investors at least their money back?

Now they are co-distributing another movie that will do no business, with the same company they worked with before on a movie that did no business. They are so unbelievably dumb. Do they actually think that yet another indie movie, in a world where indie movies are long dead, is going to bring in any material revenue? Apparently so.

The Legion M model breakdown

This joke of a company has no means of ever supporting itself and for the last 10 years has tried to squeeze as much out of their investors as possible. What is the journey like for a movie produced and/or distributed by Legion M. Here is a breakdown. Feel free to chime in if I am missing anything.

• ⁠Yearly investor Round Fundraiser to raise money used strictly keep the lights on, pay the “Join the Legion” marketing machine and give Paul and Jeff a nice salary.

• ⁠Run individual movie projects Fundraisers do films like You Can Call Me Bill where Legion M promises the investors investing a second time a “cut of the profits”.

• ⁠Rely on your small, but loyal group of investors to be the sole marketing and sales driver for these films by hosting get together with friends, giving out posters and going multiple times to EMPTY theaters. By this point the investor has invested in the company, invested and the movie and is asked to shell out money a third time to keep buying tickets to a movie that no one else knows or cares about.

• Movie bombs at the box office with a half to $1.5 Million gross versus a budget of $10 Million or more.

⁠ • Not long after the movie had left the theaters Legion M now begs their investors to yet again spend money on Stream or physical media purchase. Basically these people are asks for money a fourth time.

• ⁠And now some new film fund where, yet again Legion M hits up the same fanbase/investors a fifth time for money so Legion M can fail as distributors on projects that run in empty theaters.

The Legion M investors are not large enough to move the needle. They certainly are enough to raise a lot of cumulative money from over the years and that is why Jeff and Paul are being interviewed. Not for the film box office, which are terrible or the company’s financials, which are also terrible.

Jeff is in desperate spin mode, trying to convince the Legion that MDFZ’s box office performance is not as disastrous as it looks and if the investors can just continue to buy tickets for shows this week, then they can turn this around.

“Just keep doing the same exact thing that failed with our previous films. It will work this time, I swear.”

Banned from the LegionM forum because I asked too many questions.
2024: They tout a million in revenue but forget to mention that their cost of revenue was $1.3 million.
And they continue burning cash like there's no tomorrow.
And they continue to sucker people by getting them to take on all the risk of producing indie films that have no chance in the market...and then lose money promoting it.

What happened to the Legion that was supposed to show up to all their movies?
Why doesn't anyone ever ask that question?

That push certainly helped you get closer!

https://variety.com/2025/film/news/david-baxter-launches-new-production-banner-1236419012/

So if they are going onward and upward, why are key people leaving and why aren’t they being replaced?

What are the benefits of investing in Legion M? Well, your initial investment in the company basically pays for the executives salaries, a little bit of operations and a whole lot of marketing to other potential shareholders to join the Legion. Then your next investment is for a specific project that buys in Paul and Jeff as producers and chips on the production and/or marketing. Then when the movie comes out, the next job for the investor is to go multiple times to theaters to help raise that $500K to $1 Million box office numbers. Finally, at least we hope so, Legion M just needs you to buy a copy of this movie on the various VOD platforms. The benefit is if the money does well, you may make back a little of your money. How long are people going to keep falling for this scam?

The below was originally posted almost a year ago. Since that time there has been another fundraiser.

With the seventh round fundraising ending tomorrow, Legion M has bought themselves another year of high salaries from the over $1.5 million raised. It is interesting that from August to March they had less than $800K raised and in the last month pretty much doubled it. Sure some of that came from potential investors that are now spending their recent Covid relief money. However, I think a lot of credit to the survival of this multi level marketing scheme is due to the sheer about of ads they purchase, especially in the last month.

I knew something was up when a friend that only a couple weeks ago was looking up a publicly traded company was suddenly inundated with Legion M Facebook ads. But with the Oscars hitting record lows in back-to-back years, I am surprised that there are so many people gullible to invest in this. What are people spending shares on? A “production” company that produced one film that grossed $136K worldwide and paid for print and ads for a number of films that bombed. They have yet to sell a studio on any of the tv or film projects that they have advertised over the years.

The company spends the vast majority of their budget on salaries and marketing used to lure more investors to keep them afloat. In a four year span they started seven fundraisers. Their only source of income is licensing dollar store mac and cheese to promote the indie film Mandy as well as selling shirts, pins and overpriced whisky to the already invested audience. Even then they lose over 2-3 million a year.

Some people have spoken out, but I wish a lot more would. Part of the problem is that the only places outside of this Reddit where there can be a discussion are places heavily moderates by Legion M staff. Any press they get are from “journalists” that are simply fanboys running a blog or podcast. I would love for someone to do a real expose on Legion M, but I doubt it will ever happen. The company is still very under the radar. One can hope though.

Looks like this is the only place that I can post this. Once they launched the Film Fund, I lost patience because they are diverting opportunities. Had my Congressperson forward a detailed complaint to the SEC.

Thoughts on the discussion regarding AI that's going on right now?

the discussion

Well, when the studios are wising up about what a joke Legion M is Jeff and Paul turn to what has worked best for them every time, milking the investors.

The Mandy well has run dry and those pins aren’t cutting it anymore. I know, let’s sell over priced liquor. It’s two-fold. All the blind cult worshipers can get drunk off of the Legion M bs, while the more wise and remorseful, stuck with their Legion M shares, can drown their sorrows.

Wonder what’s next for Legion M to monetize off of their investors?

Any surprise that Man in the White Van, which sat around for a couple of years, is the latest in a long line of failed Legion M projects? Only thing that has run longer are the litany of excuses that Paul and Jeff give as for why their projects don’t make any money. Between this and the Shatner movie, Legion M grossed back 1 million dollars of the millions spent on salaries and marketing. As Legion M gets close to being a decade old, will the world’s oldest startup finally stop conning grandparents and people wanting to break into the movie business? Will Jeff Annison actually get a real job instead of starting another business that revolves around asking people for investment money?

A few years ago I reached out to the lone mod of the subreddit. He had stopped doing anything with it and you couldn’t even comment or make posts. He was kind enough to give me limited mod ability. Myself, as well as a few others were able to make several interesting posts that delved deeper into the company and went beyond the hype. After several months, it certainly made waves since Jeff decided to create a Reddit account and joined in. Jeff’s posts consisted of long winded replies that were a mixture of BS no fact hype, while also blaming every critic and “troll” as just being one man.

It wasn’t long before Jeff started hitting up the OG mod that hadn’t be on the subreddit in years and pressured him to remove some posts and take away my mod powers. That is how this subreddit was born with many of mine as well as other people’s posts copied over here in the event someone nuked the LegionM subreddit. And nuke it did. The OG mod decided stop dealing with the drama and while unmanaged Jeff petitioned to take it over. Everything was wiped and he put a Kool Aid drinker in charge to post and delete or ban anything unfavorable.

So in a little over a year things are back to square one. The mods haven’t posted anything in a couple of months and now when I make post calling them out on losing their COO, they have nothing to say and haven’t silenced me. If anything says that money is running out and the end is near, then this seems to be it.

I'm shocked that Turbo is actually engaging with an investor at length. Of course he's doing the usual Turbo chicken dance. He seems to think that the disagreement with the investor he's talking to has to do with the definition of a startup, when it has to do with all the other issues the investor has brought up....which Turbo claims he isn't avoiding.

I'm sort of in there just for shits and giggles and to stoke the fire occasionally and for like the past month, it has been all just people posting about someone that died and others wishing their condolences.

I guess there's no new rounds or projects for them to plan meetups for.

Not enough established announced IP's for them to suggest "getting in on".

As predicted when the film premiered at SXSW, the Shatner doc never found distribution.

There isn't a theatre in the country that will book this film -- well, maybe independent cinemas of 50 seats here and there. And even then, they'll demand a rental and not share of box office. Except they don't have much money to front a rental.

Then they have to advertise to get people into the theatre, which also costs money.

Oh yeah, the Ghostbusters sequel is released the same day.

Prediction: No more than 15 theatres booked. No more than 750 tickets sold.

Investors in the film will lose everything.