Brian Koppelman
Screenwriter, Director & Showrunner. On 3 shows, 3 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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Together with writing partner David Levien, he wrote feature films including Rounders and Ocean's Thirteen and co-created the Showtime drama series Billions. They also developed the series Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, alongside Koppelman's work hosting the podcast The Moment.
3shows
3appearances
41statements
2resolved
1supported
0contradicted
50%fully supported
Everything Brian Koppelman said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Koppelman: Writer's rooms extend showrunners' worldviews
“Writer's rooms become extensions of the way the showrunners see the world, and the way they see the world of their shows.”
Koppelman: Showrunners edit every episode regardless of writing credit
“Almost all shows, the showrunner does the final pass on all the episodes, no matter whose name is going on.”
Koppelman: Mid-budget $14M-$30M films are much harder to make outside Netflix
“It's much harder to make those mid, mid, those sort of mid budget, 14 to 25 or thirty million dollar movies. Though Netflix does it, right? You can do it at Netflix now, which is probably where it would happen, but, and then, or you would try to tell the story…”
Koppelman: Pitching Rounders today would be a TV series, not a movie
“No, you would pitch the world of the underground card rooms for television, because I think a lot of that, that's where this stuff lives, and that would have been, I think, a fascinating thing to see also.”
Koppelman: Partnership success depends entirely on managing your own conduct
“The more you know that the success or failure of a partnership is based entirely on how you comport yourself, the better off that you'll be.”
Koppelman: High performers require enforced mental breaks to succeed
“It's not surprising to me that so many of us who are high achievers, aggressive in going after what we want, willing to take risks, That finding some tool that gives you some enforced break from that, it's not surprising to me that that then, when you then com…”
Koppelman: Being close friends with both Marc Andreessen and Bill Gurley
“This is gonna sound odd, but I'm very friendly with Marc Andreessen and Bill Gurley. There can't, there's like five of us, I think, in the world.”
Koppelman: Knowing "Runner Runner" was a horrible movie every day of production
“I knew it was a horrible movie every day that I was working on it, and we couldn't get it better, and Ben and us tried our best, and Justin tried his best, and it was just one of those things.”
Koppelman: Rounders bombed theatrically before making hundreds of millions on DVD
“You know, the movie was a bomb in the theaters, but now it's, you know, obviously a movie that people not only like, but are obsessed with, and you know, it did hundreds of millions on DVD later, and it's a movie I get asked to do a sequel to every day of my l…”
Koppelman co-created Billions after a box-office flop and HBO firing
“David and I wrote a movie that completely bombed at the box office. It was a disaster on Rotten Tomatoes. We were involved in a high profile project that was going to be on HBO and it never happened. We got fired from it before it even begun. And we had a movi…”
Koppelman: Creative partners should resolve major disagreements strictly in private
“If there's something that suddenly is going to, we see really differently, we just immediately take it to a private communication, right? We take the audience out of it, right? We never talked about this, but we just do it. We take the audience out of it, beca…”
Koppelman: Every character in 'Billions' is written to be smarter than the writers
“You have to make these fictional characters feel incredibly real to you, and you want to write them smarter than you are, and that's the only thing I can say is we want every character in Billions to be smarter than we are.”
Koppelman: Write with total freedom, then rewrite with total clarity
“So the whole gag is to write with total freedom and then rewrite with total clarity.”
Koppelman: NYT reporter Mike Isaac attended 94 of 100 writers' room days
“As a co-executive producer, he didn't write any episodes, but yeah, Joe, he was in the room. I would say if we did a hundred days in the room, Mike was there for 94 of the hundred days.”
Koppelman: A 60-page Billions teleplay relies on a 20-page scene outline
“For every episode of Billions, let's say an episode of Billions, the teleplay is 60 pages. The outline from which we worked is usually 20 pages.”
Koppelman: HBO hedge fund project died during the 2008 financial crash
“David and I started trying to write about them eight years before billions ever happened, and almost did a project about them at HBO, and the last minute didn't happen because of the financial crash of”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Brian's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 a16zLEDGER | Screenwriter, Director & Showrunner | 1 | 21 | 100% 1/1 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |
 KNOWLEDGE PROJECTLEDGER | Screenwriter, Director & Showrunner | 1 | 11 | — | full record on the Knowledge Project → |
 ACQUIREDLEDGER | Screenwriter, Director & Showrunner | 1 | 9 | 0% 0/1 | full record on Acquired → |