Slumping distributor/producer/financier Broad Green Pictures this morning will shutter its production division, a move that will mean layoffs of about 15 of Broad Green’s 75 employees, along with the exit of most of about 50 development projects being kicked back to filmmakers to be set up elsewhere, Deadline reports. CEO Gabriel Hammond confirmed this to Deadline, but despite rumors to the contrary, stressed that he and his brother, Broad Green Chief Creative Officer Daniel Hammond, are not beating a retreat from the movie business. Instead, Hammond said, they are hitting the reset button after enduring a period in which they’ve been unable to buy a real breakout hit despite high investment in prestige, mainstream, genre and festival films.
Broad Green Pictures was behind several genre films including Jeremy Saulnier‘s Green Room and this summer’s dud Wish Upon, directed by Annabelle‘s John R. Leonetti.
While Wish Upon isn’t the only reason for the company’s fall from grace, it’s one that Hammond fiercely calls an “abject failure”:
“Given the abject failure that was Wish Upon, there is not a positive story that can be written about the company right now,” Gabriel Hammond told the site. “It super saddens my brother and I because we have worked really hard these past few years. But it is time to reexamine what we are doing, own up to the mistakes we have made and come up with a plan for moving forward. The rumors of our demise, which have been circulating for a year and a half, are greatly exaggerated. We will completely retool the production division. We need a new way to source films. My brother and I take full responsibility for the failure to put together a department that can deliver, and this is 100% on us for not bringing in the right people and giving them an opportunity to thrive. Unfortunately, that department cannot continue like this.”
Beyond the genre film Wish Upon, there was the Nicolas Winding Refn-directed Neon Demon, which grossed just $1.3 million worldwide.
Broad Green had just announced that Casey La Scala would be directing 1974, a thriller based on the true events behind the most famous haunted house in Amityville, Long Island. La Scala wrote the script, inspired by the real-life DeFeo family tragedy. Eli Roth and Todd Garner were producing with production expected to begin by September. I think it’s safe to assume this is one of the projects in turnaround.
Broad Green promises a full reboot of the company in 2018.
