It’s the end of the world, and Jayson Ross knows it. Better still: he’s been preparing for this since 2014.
Ross is the real-life Ian (played by Neal McDonough) from the Homestead movie produced by Angel Studios (Sound of Freedom). The post-apocalyptic survival film, which made about $21 million domestically at the box office, spurred a day-and-date continuation series of the same name starring pretty much everyone from the film but McDonough — Ian’s in a coma, sorry Jayson.
Ross has no one to blame but himself. Homestead the movie and its spinoff series are based on the Black Autumn books written by Ross and his ex-Green Beret collaborator Jeff Kirkham. (Among many other companies, Ross and Kirkham founded Black Rifle Coffee together.) The first two episodes of Homestead: The Series are streaming on the Angel app (and have been for a long time, more on that later). Season one finally continues on Wednesday and will run through Christmas Day. Beyond that, as first reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Homestead: The Series has been renewed for a second season. THR can now report Homestead: The Series season two will start production on Wednesday.
With Ian sidelined, Homeland: The Series follows ex-Green Beret Jeff Eriksson (played by Bailey Chase in both the film and the series; he’s basically Kirkham), who leads his family to Ian’s fortified prepper compound in the Rockies after the detonation of a nuke in Los Angeles devolves the country into chaos.
From fiction back to fact, Ross, who says his net worth is in the nine figures, resides at such a (real) compound on 300 acres in the same mountain range, north of Salt Lake City, Utah. It is Mormon country, and though Ross is a lapsed practitioner, he cites the LDS church as where he first learned to prep for the end. (They’re still awaiting the rapture — any day now.)
His religious upbringing “flipped into love of the land and agriculture and small landholding homesteading,” Ross told THR in an interview that first opened his high, reinforced gates to the media.
Ross’s space is not quite the prepper bunker you’re picturing — well, unless you watch Homestead, then it is exactly as you’re picturing. Ross’s real home on the ‘stead is used for the film and television franchise’s interior shots, and his real land for the exteriors. The guy lives in a super-mansion — this isn’t exactly where Tina Fey didn’t break Kimmy Schmidt (Ellie Kemper).
Some of Ross’s (very large) square footage is cliché for a doomsday bunker — but not much.
“I mean, yes, I have a large structure that has a big underground component in case of nuclear event. But that’s just super unlikely,” Ross said. “And I don’t see the advantage … of being underground, isolated from the supplies you would use to create a sustainable community.”
The only thing(s) Ross wants under ground are his hands: he and his brother oversee more than four acres of sustainable agriculture, a goat herd, more than 100 laying chickens, and a large wild deer and elk herd.
Though Ross does have “a shitload of guns and a shitload of ammo,” he’d far prefer to shoot, skin and serve the hoofed mammals than the ones with feet.
A ton of bullets fly in Homestead — probably the one thing director Ben Smallbone says he’s dramatized beyond the natural consequences of a post-apocalyptic America.
“One thing you don’t think about is, in the apocalypse, not only do you need food, do you need water, do you need a way to generate electricity and medical supplies,” Smallbone told THR, “but you’re going to run out of ammo really, really fast if you have all of those things and people are coming for you.”
When production stops, the gunplay does not — but Ross says the weapons training on his compound pales in comparison to they time they spend gardening. He’s ready for whatever, but prefers what he calls “security through sharing.”
Ross maintains a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet of 200 “volunteers” invited to keep our species going in such a scenario. It includes a number of special forces, including Green Berets, like Kirkham, Navy SEALs and even Afghan refugee commandos. But really Ross has more doctors and landscapers than anything, and the primary criteria for making the cut is playing nice. Traditional skills, like metal fabrication and farming, are “super learnable,” Ross says. I checked and Ross confirmed: there will be no need for a TV Editor post-apocalypse. (There’s barely a need for one now.)
Smallbone is also not on the list, which makes our threeway interview a bit awkward.
“Hopefully the apocalypse happens when we’re filming Homestead at the homestead,” Smallbone, who lives on a (much smaller) farm in Nashville, Tenn., said.
As prepped and ready as his is, Ross doesn’t actually think the end of days is nigh.
“No,” Ross said. “I mean, I give it five percent in my lifetime, which is reasonable.”
It is likewise reasonable to call Homestead a hit: nearly one in every eight minutes watched on the Angel app is “tied to Homestead,” per Angel, and the film and the pair of episodes have been watched for 81 million minutes. The studio says the Homestead franchise “has been directly responsible for acquiring 253,000 new Angel Guild members” in the past 11 months alone.
Homestead: The Series had a rocky road getting here — and not just because of the terrain. Production on the series had completed two episodes before snow in Utah caused a major delay. It got so bad and lasted so long that Angel Studios had to re-fund the remainder of the episodes, as THR first reported. The quarter-million new Angel Guild members (a real missed opportunity not going with “Angel investors”) sure came in handy, though maybe they should have just hit Ross up?
The first two episodes of Homestead: The Series have been available on the Angel app since Dec. 20, 2024. THR can first share the official trailer for the remainder of the season — and more photos from inside and outside Ross’s compound (beneath the video) — below.
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