Ian Brennan

Biography

Ian Brennan built his career on the sort of dream entertained by almost every high school theater participant: he turned the dramatic world that meant so much to him as a teenager into a wildly popular television series. 

After initially dreaming of depicting the theater subculture as a film, Brennan became the co-creator of "Glee" (Fox 2009-2015) with television kingpins Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk.

 After a lifetime of holding the realm close to his heart, Brennan found his show incurring the same passion and fandom that theater gave him in the first place. 

Ian Brennan was born in 1978 in Mount Prospect, Illinois to parents John, a pastor, and Charman Brennan. He attended the local Prospect High School, where his experiences in show choir would inspire later creative endeavors, and then Loyola University Chicago. 

After graduation in 2005, Brennan focused his energies on building an acting career, joining the Second City Training Center and. performing in the Chicago-based stage musical Finian's Rainbow in 1999. Brennan then moved to New York City, where he performed in a number of off-Broadway theater companies. 

Brennan accumulated a number of minor acting roles in film and television, gaining credits in projects including the movies "Too Much Flesh" (2000) and Chris Rock's "I Think I Love My Wife" (2007), and TV shows "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" (NBC 2001-2011) and "CSI: NY" (CBS 2004-2013). 

However, Brennan found himself fated for a career behind the camera when he teamed with writer-producer Ryan Murphy to develop the television series "Glee" (Fox 2009-2015). Brennan originally conceived the idea that would become "Glee" as a feature, penning a screenplay that his friend and producer Mike Novik would pass on to Murphy, who encouraged Brennan to rework the project as a television series. 

In addition to co-creating, with Murphy and Brad Falchuk, the series and writing 32 of its episodes, Brennan also provided the narration for the show's recap segments. Shifting gears back to his original passion for big screenwriting, Brennan collaborated with Leigh Whannell on the script for the horror comedy "Cooties" (2015), starring and produced by Elijah Wood.

 Apparently growing attached to the genre, Brennan reteamed with Murphy and Falchuk to develop a series born from the same cloth: "Scream Queens" (Fox 2015-), an anthology series affectionately parodying horror cinema.

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