It took these brothers 14 years to make “Fatman”

For years, the paradox of “Fatman” was that Ian and Eshom Nelms wrote a screenplay so good that no one would let them make it.

“We had that script and we would show people and they’d be like, ‘ Holy ( expletive), this is crazy,” Ian Nelms says.

“That script is what got us representation,” Eshom Nelms adds of the screenplay they wrote around 2006 when they were just starting out as a filmmaking team who wrote and directed ( and, under a pseudonym, edited, too).

At the time, Eshom Nelms, 42, and Ian Nelms, 41, had a pair of microbudget indie features that played festivals and won awards on their résumé. That got them in the room with decision- makers.

“They’d watch ‘ Night of the Dog’ and ‘ Squirrel Trap’ and they were like, ‘ OK, these are cool little crappy movies’ — literally, that’s what they would say — ‘ but what do you have that’s bigger?’ ” Ian says.

“Fatman” was their answer, the offbeat tale of a world- weary Santa Claus headed to a snowy showdown with a hit man hired by a boy not at all OK with the lump of coal under his Christmas tree.

When agents and producers read it, they invariably praised its quirky, cool mix of action thrills and dark comedy. And then they passed.

“Our reps would get us in with that script, and we’d go to places where they’d be like, ‘ OK, this is

Mel Gibson as Chris Cringle in “Fatman.”

good, but you guys can’t make this,’ ” Ian says. “We’re like, ‘ Why?’

“They’d say, ‘ All you have is these little $ 5,000 movies, $ 1,500 movies. I’m not giving you 20 million bucks.’ ”

But what Hollywood missed in those meetings was the resourceful determination that in time delivered the brothers to what now is their biggest release yet and the realization of a long- delayed dream.

“Fatman” opens in some theaters on Nov. 13 with Mel Gibson as Chris Cringle, Marianne Jean- Baptiste as Mrs. Ruth Claus, and Walton Goggins as a hit man with a secret grudge of his own against Santa Claus. ( It comes to digital and on- demand services Nov. 24.)

A few years of screenplays that never got made led them back to their DIY roots and “Lost On Purpose” which starred Jane Kaczmarek, C. Thomas Howell and James Lafferty and was shot near their hometown — “A dairy epic,” Ian sardonically says of its not- so- commercial genre.

“Waffle Town,” their adaptation of the novel of the same name, starred

Danny Glover and Lafferty, again. But it was “Small Town Crime,” a hit at the 2017 South by Southwest Film Festival, which got them to “Fatman.”

“Small Town Crime” showed the industry what kind of tone the Nelms brothers would bring to an offbeat crime caper, and its cast — Octavia Spencer, a friend from their earliest days in Hollywood, John Hawkes, Anthony Anderson and Robert Forster — testified to the kind of talent they might attract.

“That’s what opened the door to get to ‘ Fatman,’ ” Ian says.

Four years ago this month, the Nelms brothers caught a Q& A with Mel Gibson at the Directors Guild for his Oscar- nominated film “Hacksaw Ridge,” and on him saw a glorious beard.

“He’s up front, kneading the beard, talking,” Ian says. “You could feel his shoulders were heavy. You could see that the filming had been tough and this ( awards season) circuit was tough, and he was a little beat up from it.

“And we were just like, ‘ That is Santa Claus,’” he says. “This is the guy we need to play that role.”