From SVP for Kevin Hart’s Hartbeat in LA to Founder of Atlanta’s Braveheart Productions, Ty Walker’s In It for the Long Haul

By Carol Badaracco Padgett

As a kid, Ty Walker had a super-charged imagination. He loved The Goonies, ETs and Indiana Joneses of the world. He loved thrillers and adventures, and he found his home as a film producer.

By the time Walker reached his 20th year in the entertainment business in Los Angeles, he realized something: “I produced for a lot of other people, and I didn’t see myself having the brand that I wanted anymore.”

What brand was that, and how did he get to Braveheart Productions in Atlanta? Here’s the story in Walker’s words.


Tell us about the genesis of your company, Braveheart Productions.

Walker: One of the things that made me create Braveheart is that I got into the business to tell thrillers and adventure, right? But throughout the years there was comedy, there was horror, there was drama, and I wanted to have a company where we created content that was that was elevated and high concept. And I wanted to feature and mostly focus on thrillers, suspense and horror.

Braveheart is also one of my favorite films. But like so many people, I had fear. So I was reading these books on getting out of your comfort zone and tackling your fears, and that's where [the name] Braveheart came from.


Braveheart recently struck a deal with Assembly Studios. What are your thoughts on Assembly after spending so many years in LA and now aligning yourself with the studio here?

Walker: I think Fight Night was [one of] the first productions I’d seen at Assembly, but I had been on the campus prior to that. I’d done a tour, and I had even seen it when it was being built. I’d talked to several people that were a part of the building, and I was like, wow, this is going to be a really great stage in a great location.

At some point last year, there was an event [at Assembly], and again, I did a tour with some other folks. What’s interesting is no matter how many times I had been on the campus, I was still looking at it and thinking it was such a great place to shoot a movie.

They've literally thought of everything. And so I ended up having a meeting with the folks at NBCUniversal. And they were such champions of the ideas that I was presenting to them. I've known a few of them [over the years], and they are just really great people. And that's how this whole thing came about—we had those conversations and synergies with NBCU, the folks at Gray, the folks at Assembly, and it all just made sense.

My team and I had wanted to find a home. Someplace we could post up and have offices and produce and develop and shoot our content on those lots. It all made sense.

You had worked on Fight Night—the Atlanta story that premiered as a limited series on Peacock—at Assembly Studios before inking your deal with Assembly. Tell us about the experience.

Walker: Fight Night starred Kevin Hart, Samuel Jackson, and many others, and it was just a great little series. Very fun. And it was based on a real story that happened here in Atlanta. I think it was the first production that had come through Assembly after they [opened].

But it allowed me to see what they were able to do and how seamless things were, and that was amazing.

You think about Assembly, and everything [was there] from transportation or trucks to wardrobe to props—all the things that we normally need on a daily basis in film and television, it's there on the lot. I think the only thing you really need to get outside of [what they] offer is your camera gear. But grip and electric, it's there too.

And all these things are really, really valuable assets for us as filmmakers.


From where you are today with Braveheart at Assembly, flashback to the very beginning of how you got into the industry and became a writer, producer and director, and ultimately to owning your own production company. What’s the short version of how you got here?

Walker: It’s so many years ago … I graduated from college and I worked in corporate for two years and decided, nope, I really want to learn this movie and television thing. And so I go to LA, That's a short stint, because I'm from Texas.

When I went to LA, I quickly realized I didn't have a clue what was going on in film and television. I didn't know what a production assistant was. I didn't know anything. So I learned so much when I was there.

And then I got an opportunity to visit Atlanta, and I met Will Packer and Rob Hardy, and I fell in love with it. That was in 2006.

You had Rainforest, which is owned by Will Packer and Rob Hardy. And you had Tyler Perry who was doing a project or two every year. And Will and Rob were doing a project or two [each year]. And there were some smaller companies out there, too, like Tomorrow Pictures who were more focused on commercial work and music videos. But the industry then wasn’t like it is now.

And so I give credit to Rob Hardy and Will Packer … and Angie Bones and others, because those people are the ones that kind of took me under their wing and started to teach me. I worked on a lot of their projects.

And then I had an opportunity to go to New York, because one of the directors that we worked with here was from New York and he brought a team out there, and so I ended up being in New York for seven years. Then I started producing, and I met people that I’m still friends with today, and I value their friendship and their knowledge.

It was more on an indie level. We didn't have much money, but we made really cool projects and we had a lot of fun. And that was my entrance into producing.

The years passed and that led me to get really engulfed in the incentive world. I started to understand incentives all over the world. So now I was going to Mexico, to London, to Ireland … different places around Europe, and also Colombia. Because I understood the incentive.

So I started to build this database of filmmakers and key executives around the world, and that brought so much value to me.

I’m still working with a lot of these people now, we’re still in contact, and so that was a great part of my life.

Fast-forward from there. What happened next?

Walker: Two buddies of mine called me and they said we need some help [and] we're working with Kevin [Hart] now, and we need somebody that really understands production from A to Z.

I’d never been on the executive side, right? That wasn’t really my world. But I was like, you know what? I'm going to give it a try.

I had just done Black Lightning for Warner Brothers (WB). It was a big show and we had a ton of fun, with a lot of great Georgia cast and crew in that show. And I was like, you know what? I wouldn't mind trying this out. And so I flew to Ireland to meet Kevin, and I'd already met him here in Georgia.

We hit it off, and I just loved his team at Hartbeat. And that was the start there. So I was with them for several years, and Kevin works and works and works. I've never seen anything like it.

So I was literally working seven days a week. It was a lot, but it was fun.

When a new CEO came in and wanted me to move to Los Angeles, I just didn't want to go. I love Georgia, I love the South, and so I wanted to keep pushing the state of Georgia and its surrounding areas as much as I could.

So I stayed here, and that's where the thought to create this new entity, Braveheart, came about—where I could really use my knowledge and my relationships.

Things have changed in the industry a great deal in the past five years or so. What’s your take on that?

Walker: I realize that the industry is shaken right now. I realize that people are pivoting, but there's still a need.

You watch del Toro's Frankenstein, you watch Coogler's Sinners, you watch F1 and The Rip that recently came out on Netflix with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, and so those are stories that I was interested in telling. So [I decided], I'm going to stay firm and I'm going to build a team, which I have and they're great. The folks on my team are amazing.

We’re going to push stories like that, and that's what we've been doing.

You’ve been everywhere in the industry. What do you think Atlanta does differently and does best when you compare it with other major markets here in the United States?

Walker: I would say the biggest thing, the biggest advantage that Georgia has on other markets—and I’ve worked in a lot of other markets—is the amount of professionalism [here] and what people are doing here. It’s amazing.

Obviously, Los Angeles has a hundred years on us. They have more people in the business and they have more vendors. But in my opinion, Georgia also has some of the best vendors and the best crew in the United States. Our infrastructure is here. It is already built.

A lot of these other markets are great too, but I think over the years that we've been here, we've done amazing things in building the infrastructure. And it takes time. It takes time to build that infrastructure.

It's already here in Georgia, You have Assembly Studios, you have the Triliths of the world, you have a lot of sound stages, you've got a lot of camera vendors, you've got a lot of grip and electric vendors, you've got a lot of prop houses. You've got all the things that are needed for your project. And then you also have a lot of great line producers, you've got a lot of great producers, directors, crew, you have a lot of hair and makeup. And these are people that know the business; they know what they're supposed to be doing. They know how to deliver what is needed [for] a film.


What are your favorite projects you've worked on to date? And what do you have planned for the future?

Walker: I’ve worked on so many really interesting projects. One of my favorites, honestly, I think we all made like $100 a day on that project. It was a little indie that I did with a buddy of mine, Gabriel Judet-Weinshel, who’s based out of Brooklyn.

We shot this little sci-fi, and Gabe, he's brilliant. Gabe is the director that can also color his film and edit his film and do all the visual effects.

But it isn’t the film [so much] that makes the experience enjoyable, it's the people. If you look at Clint Eastwood, he says he likes to make films with his friends. Or Spike Lee, he says he likes to make films with his friends.

And I think that's what it becomes, year after year, once you learn that this group of people, this department, is great at what they do, I'm calling them every time, right?

And then they become your friends and you start doing things outside of the movie or the television show. That’s what that little movie many years ago created for me, a friendship with these people in New York [and] Los Angeles.

We still talk, and we still bounce ideas off of each other. And that piece of it has been really fun throughout the years.

I think another project that I really loved, because of how big it was, and it had superheroes and suits and this whole intricate world, is Black Lightning.

It was extremely tiring because of how much we had to shoot and how fast we had to turn it around, but it was also a really great experience for me. Because I come from a world where we had a modest budget to a world in New York where we had very small budgets to then a world back here in Georgia where we had huge budgets. Massive.

And so, you have to pivot and learn and relearn how you need to operate in and on these different films.

I'm very thankful for that, because there are people who have only been able to work on really small shows or there're people who’ve only been able to work on the really big shows—and that’s an amazing thing if that’s your world, on the bigger shows. But I think being able to work on things that were really tiny to massive, multi-millions per episode was very valuable to me. It has allowed me to be very smart when it comes to things across the board, and that has definitely been a plus in my career.


Is there anything else on your mind before we close?

Walker: We have a slate of about eight movies that we are developing, half of which we have written internally. And they're all really exciting. They're well-written movies with a lot of twists and turns, and with a little elevation to them.

Another thought is that in this business, in general, we're in a period where we kind of have to tighten our belt a bit and we have to pivot and we have to relearn. That’s what we're all doing is relearning.

Thankfully, one thing we don’t have to relearn is that we all love a good story. That's not going to change.

And one last thing, if there are writers in town, or wherever, that want to submit something, please go to our website at braveheart-ent.com. Scroll to the bottom and you’ll see our email address and then a disclaimer. It needs to come from an attorney or agent.