Gabriel & Daniel Hammond

Heading into the fall festivals, the billionaire brothers behind an indie-film upstart reveal a pivot to broader-appeal fare (think Bad Santa 2) and why the midbudget movie isn’t dead.

- Tatiana Siegel

GABRIEL AND DANIEL Hammond aren’t the first interlopers to crash the gates of Hollywood with deep pockets and ambitions. But the Washington, D.C.-reared duo, who sold their hedge fund, SteelPath, to OppenheimerFunds in 2012 for what was said to be several billion dollars, have every intention of sticking around. Since launching Broad Green Pictures (named for the street they grew up on in Potomac, Md.) in 2014, the brothers — whose parents took them to old movies — have assembled a staff of 90 that includes Straight Outta Compton producer Matt Alvarez as production president. When Alvarez took the position in May, and indie-minded Alix Madigan exited her creative executive post a month later, it signaled Broad Green is shifting its focus from smaller-budget dramas to broader-audience pics (fewer anti-greed polemics like 99 Homes or auteur meditations like Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups). There’s still room for acquisitions, and Broad Green will troll the Toronto Film Festival in September, but it’s seeking films in the vein of its most successful release, the Robert Redford-Nick Nolte starrer A Walk in the Woods ($29.5 million domestic after Broad Green paid nothing for the film, committing only to a wide release). The shift is apparent in Broad Green’s slate: Bad Santa 2 in November, then Villa Capri (a two-hander with Tommy Lee Jones and Morgan Freeman) and the dance comedy Step Sisters.