Within the past few years, the head writers of television shows, also known as showrunners, have become more visible and more recognized by audiences. What a lot of fans dont realize is that getting your start in television writing is a long and hard process. Very few sell their million dollar ideas to a network and are trusted with running their own show. Some showrunners break-out through film. The Newsrooms Aaron Sorkin sold his play A Few Good Men and wrote the screenplay for the adaptation. From there he went on to create Sports Night, The West Wing, and more. The Wires David Simon got his start in journalism, writing for the Baltimore Sun for 13 years, and selling one of his non-fiction books to be the basis of Homicide: Life on the Streets developed by Paul Attanasio. This enabled Simon to get his foot in the door and eventually he created The Wire. Heres a look at some of the most prominent showrunners around, including some writing credits you will be surprised to see.
10. Matthew Weiner
Created: Mad Men Pedigree: The Sopranos Youd be surprised he worked on: Becker & Andy Richter Controls the Universe Weiner got his foot in the door while writing on Becker. He was so unsatisfied with his job that at nights he wrote the Mad Men pilot, which eventually made its way in front of David Chases eyes, who offered him a job on The Sopranos during their fifth season. In between season 6 part one and two, Weiner took the whole Sopranos crew and filmed the pilot for Mad Men, and the cast and AMC waited a year for The Sopranos to wrap up before the filmed the rest of the first season of Mad Men.