--- name: "Ian Brennan" canonical: "https://film.one/person/ian-brennan" roles: ["Creator","Director","Writer"] born: "23 April 1978" reviewed_on_fi1m: 1 updated: "2026-09-17T01:13:30.303330+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Ian Brennan Creator and director. Born 23 April 1978 in Mount Prospect, Illinois, USA. ## Details - **Work:** Creator, Director, Writer - **Born:** 23 April 1978, Mount Prospect, Illinois, USA - **Active:** 2009–present ## Fi1m on Ian Brennan > Ian Brennan writes the line nobody else would say out loud, and for one season of *Glee* that carried a programme. Since then he has taken the meanness into horror and true crime, where the jokes have thinned and the reviews have been mixed. Whatever else is happening in an episode of *Glee* (2009), Sue Sylvester will at some point turn to another adult and say the cruellest true thing anyone present is thinking. Ian Brennan wrote most of those lines, and he has explained where they come from: "It’s just the mean things that pop into the back of your mind that you sometimes want to say but don’t. The difference is that Sue actually says it." That is his method. He writes the remark you thought better of and gives it to a character who did not. He came to it as an actor, trained in Chicago, and it shows in the way his dialogue sits in the mouth: the lines are built to be said, not read. In 2005 he wrote a screenplay about a high-school show choir, drawn from his own and, by his account, without affection. Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk turned it into a series with him, and across six seasons he wrote many episodes, narrated, and directed now and then. Our view of *Glee* is that the first year was the sharpest, oddest comedy on American television and the five that followed forgot which parts of it were the good ones. The part we liked best was the part he wrote. We laughed at Sue more than we were comfortable with in that first season, because the lines were funnier than her targets deserved, and the programme let her have them anyway. What followed took the mean streak into darker rooms. He co-wrote *Cooties* (2014) with Leigh Whannell, and co-created *Scream Queens* (2015) with Murphy and Falchuk, a comedy-horror that kept the insults and added the knives. He wrote for Murphy on *The Politician*, *Ratched* and *Hollywood*. Since 2022 he has been co-creator and showrunner of the *Monster* anthology, beginning with Jeffrey Dahmer (2022) and moving on to the Menendez brothers (2024), and he has directed some of the episodes himself. We have not reviewed them, so we will not judge them here. We can say that the reviews have been mixed, and that the choices these dramatisations make about real people have drawn comment. That is the risk in the turn he has taken. A writer whose instrument is the joke nobody should make has moved to material where the joke is not available and the people are not invented. He has said he can hear characters talking. The test of *Monster* is what he does when what they said is on the record. Watch the first season of *Glee* for what he can do with a line. Approach the later work knowing that the line is still his gift, and that it is a harder thing to use well when nobody is meant to laugh. ## Biography Ian Brennan is an American screenwriter, director and producer. Born on 23 April 1978 in Mount Prospect, Illinois, he studied theatre at Loyola University Chicago and began his career as an actor in Chicago and New York before turning to writing. Brennan co-created the musical comedy series *Glee* (2009) with Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk. He contributed as writer and director on multiple episodes and originally conceived the project as a film script drawing on his own high school show choir experiences. He created the Netflix true-crime anthology series *Monster*, serving as writer and showrunner on *Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story* (2026). *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, nytimes.com.* ## On Fi1m (1) - *Glee* (2009), Fi1m 68, Creator, Director, Writer — [page](https://film.one/tv/glee.md) ## Also credited on (not yet reviewed) - *Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story* (2026), Creator, Writer ## Also known for - *DAHMER - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story* (2022), Writer - *Scream Queens* (2015), Director, Writer - *Ratched* (2020), Writer - *Cooties* (2014), Story, Screenplay - *The Watcher* (2022), Writer - *Monster: The Ed Gein Story* (2025), Writer, Director - *Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story* (2024), Writer, Director - *Hollywood* (2020), Writer --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/ian-brennan