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
As a kid, Ty Walker had a super-charged imagination. He loved The Goonies, ETs and Indiana Joneses of the world. His creative soul and love for adventurous storytelling led him to producing.
Twenty Twenty Six (2026) marks Walker’s 20th year in the entertainment business, but he realized something: “I had gotten away from the initial reason why I wanted to be a storyteller. I didn’t feel that I had created the brand that I wanted to be known for.”
What brand was that, and how did Braveheart Entertainment come to life? Here’s the story in Walker’s words.
Tell us about the genesis of your company, Braveheart Entertainment.
Walker: “Well, I must admit the name pays homage to one of my favorite films, but also in life we are faced with challenges and having the strength and bravery to keep pushing no matter what is key. My reason for building the company was to develop a brand that mainly focused on elevated, high concept thriller, horror and suspenseful features and series like the shows that led me into this business.”
Braveheart recently struck a deal with Assembly Studios. What are your thoughts on Assembly after spending so many years producing in other markets and now aligning yourself with the studio here?
Walker: While at Hartbeat we produced Fight Night at Assembly but prior to that I had toured the campus a time or two and just have always loved the campus, what it provides and all of the people that run it.
No matter how many times I had been on the campus, every time I would visit, the desire to begin bringing my shows here became stronger. They've literally thought of everything. Everything we as filmmakers need from a stage, is here. Its literally a one stop shop. So, in a nutshell, I ended up having a meeting with the great 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 great, smart people. We had several conversations and the synergies between Braveheart, NBCU, my friends at Gray Media and Assembly were great and the partnership just made sense.
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: Well… I graduated from college and I worked in corporate for two years and decided, nope, I really want to learn and be a part of the storytelling business. Long story short, I packed up and moved to LA from Texas.
While in LA, I quickly realized I didn't have a clue what was going on in film and television. I had no clue what a production assistant was or even where to start.
Then I got an opportunity to visit Atlanta, I eventually met Will Packer and Rob Hardy. Those guys were great and extremely helpful in teaching me the business. That was in 2006.
At that time in Atlanta, Rainforest, which was owned by Will Packer and Rob Hardy, TPS and a few other production companies were the only shows in town. The industry in GA was not like it is now.
I give a lot of credit to Rob Hardy and Will Packer, Angie Bones, Dianne Ashford and others, because those people are the ones that took me under their wing and started to guide me.
Eventually, I had an opportunity to go to New York to work on a show and I ended up producing and staying for 7 years. I met several people that I’m still friends with today whose friendship and knowledge I really value. We were VERY indie. We didn't have much money, but we made cool projects and we had a lot of fun doing so.
The years passed and that led me to get really engulfed in the incentive world. I started to understand incentives all over the world. I began producing in Mexico, London, Ireland, Colombia and different places around Europe.
I accumulated 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 over a decade later!
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 finished 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. Long story short, I flew to Ireland to meet Kevin.
We hit it off, and I just loved the team at Hartbeat. And that was the start there. I worked with the Hartbeat team for several years. Kevin’s worth ethic is like no other. I've never seen anything like it. I was literally working seven days a week, but I loved it!
When a new CEO came in and wanted me to move to Los Angeles, I just couldn’t 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 Entertainment, came about.
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 these are the stories that I am interested in telling. So, I decided, I'm going to stay firm and I'm going to build a strong team. I now have that team and they are amazing.
We are all aligned on great stories. Powerful exciting stories.
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 advantage that Georgia has on other markets is the amount expertise from filmmakers and the amazing infrastructure that has been built.
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 SOLID.
A lot of other markets are great too, but I think over the years that we've been here, we've done amazing job at building a solid crew base and infrastructure. Then you have Assembly Studios, Trilith and several other great sound stages, we have a lot of great camera vendors, grip and electric vendors, prop houses, etc. Everything needed for a successful project is here! And when it comes to professionals, our crew base is great. These folk know the business; they know what they're doing.
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 interesting projects. One of my favorites, honestly, I think we all made $100 a day on that project. It was a super indie that I did with a buddy of mine, Gabriel Judet-Weinshel, who’s based out of Brooklyn.
We shot this 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. Very smart and talented filmmaker.
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 makes 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 that hasn’t died.
We still talk, and we still bounce ideas off each other. And that piece of it has been 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 must 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 small shows or there are people who’ve only been able to work on the 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 tiny to massive, multi-millions per episode was very valuable to me. It has allowed me to broaden my knowledge, but also to be very creative across the board, and that has been a huge differentiator 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 very exciting. They're well-written elevated movies with a lot of twists and turns.
Another thought is that in this business, in general, we're in a period where we kind of must tighten our belt a bit and we have to pivot and be willing to diversify our approach versus refusing to change because of how long the old way has worked. That’s what we're all doing is learning a new way and stretching.
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 or shoot us a DM on Instagram @brvhrt.ent. Scroll to the bottom and you’ll see our email address and then a disclaimer. It needs to come from an attorney or agent but we welcome your projects.