Ed Polgardy, president of Black Hat Magic Productions, is an acclaimed comic book creator-writer-editor, an Emmy-Award-winning television producer-director, and a successful feature film writer-producer-director.
Polgardy co-created the internationally acclaimed hit comic book series “From The Darkness” and “From The Darkness: Blood Vows”, and wrote the graphic novel adaptation of Quentin Tarantino's “From Dusk 'Til Dawn”. As Senior Editor at Jim Shooter's Defiant Comics, he developed, wrote, and edited several hit titles, including “The Good Guys” and “Dark Dominion” (penciled by “Spider-Man” co-creator Steve Ditko). Polgardy also held the Editor-in-Chief position at BIG Entertainment where he worked with celebrity concept creators John Jakes, Mickey Spillane, Tom Clancy, and Neil Gaiman. The resulting intellectual properties were licensed to Miramax, Alliance Entertainment, and ABC TV.
Polgardy’s TV work includes producing and directing: “Today’s Environment”, starring Ed Begley, Jr., “Millennium”, hosted by Peter Weller, “The Best of Wine and Food”, featuring George Hamilton, “.COM” and “.COM Kids”, starring Mark Hamill, “Elegance with Ivana”, featuring Ivana Trump, “Women in Charge”, with Nancy Glass, “First Priority”, hosted by Hunter Tylo, “Healthy Solutions”, starring Mariette Hartley, and “Monsterama”, featuring Cassandra “Elvira” Peterson. Polgardy also helped create Price/Parker, a television production company where he developed, produced, and directed “Identity”, a female-empowerment show that aired on The Learning Channel. Moving into fictional programming, Polgardy produced “Oh Jerome, No” (starring Mamoudou Athie, Natasha Lyonne, and Georgina Campbell), a short-form television series—eight 12-minute episodes—that aired on “Cake” on Fox's FXX Network.
As a screenwriter, Polgardy has had a number of his feature film scripts optioned and green-lit for production. Polgardy produced the motion pictures “Masked Mutilator” (featuring Brick Bronsky, Glenn Hetrick, and James DeBello), which he also co-wrote, “The Halfway House” (starring cult-film icon Mary Woronov), “The Ghostmaker” (starring Aaron Dean Eisenberg), “Window Of Opportunity” (with producing partner John Densmore, legendary rock-‘n’-roll drummer from The Doors), “Dark Desire” (featuring Kelly Lynch and Michael Nouri), “Megachurch Murder” (starring Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Corbin Bleu and Romeo Miller), "The Wretched" (featuring John-Paul Howard, Piper Curda, and Azie Tesfai), which was the number one movie in America for six weeks straight in the summer of 2020 and went straight into the top five on its first day of release on Netflix in the summer of 2022, and "Feed Me" (starring Christopher Mulvin, Neal Ward, and Samantha Loxley), which had its world premiere at LA's Beyond Fest in October of 2022 and racked up numerous awards on the international film festival circuit, including multiple Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Director awards.
He line produced “Boiler Maker” (starring John Savage), and co-produced “Laid to Rest” (featuring Lena Headey and Thomas Dekker). As a second unit director, Polgardy worked on “Death’s Door”, “Laid to Rest”, “Dark House”, “The Ghostmaker” and “The Wretched”.
2009
