Jonathan Tropper

• 1. Introduction

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  Jonathan Tropper grew up in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, New York City, in a liberal observant Jewish household, attending a co-ed Modern Orthodox sleepaway camp in the Poconos during childhood. Nothing about that biography suggests a future as one of television's more prolific showrunners. Yet Tropper went on to co-create Banshee, one of the more visceral dramas to air on Cinemax, and then built Warrior from an original concept left behind by Bruce Lee. How did a novelist who spent eight years manufacturing jewelry displays in Manhattan become the architect of prestige action television? And what does the path from Plan B to The Adam Project reveal about the crossover between literary fiction and Hollywood spectacle?

• 2. Eight Years in Manhattan

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  After earning a master's degree in creative writing at New York University, Tropper did not immediately write fiction for a living. He spent eight years running a Manhattan-based company that manufactured displays for jewelry companies, writing at night and on weekends around the edges of that work. The first novel, Plan B, eventually attracted the attention of an agent, which allowed him to leave the display business behind and write full time. Five of his six novels were optioned at auction within a week of publication: The Book of Joe, How to Talk to a Widower, Everything Changes, One Last Thing Before I Go, and This Is Where I Leave You. The themes running through those books trace his own life closely, covering being single, getting married, getting divorced, and living in suburbia. His hometown of New Rochelle in Westchester County, New York, supplied the characters and settings that populate much of that fiction.

• 3. Novels Into Film

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  How to Talk to a Widower was selected for The Richard and Judy Show in the United Kingdom in 2007, and Everything Changes earned a Booksense selection. This Is Where I Leave You was published in August 2009 and became the 2014 film of the same name, with Tropper writing the screenplay and Shawn Levy directing a cast that included Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Adam Driver, and Jane Fonda. His most recent novel, One Last Thing Before I Go, published in August 2012, was optioned by Paramount Pictures for J. J. Abrams. Tropper also co-wrote the adaptation of The Book of Joe with Ed Burns, who was set to direct. Three of Tropper's books remain in active adaptation. On the production side, Tropper wrote the screenplay for Kodachrome, released in 2017 and starring Jason Sudeikis, Ed Harris, and Elizabeth Olsen; the film debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival to strong notices before Netflix acquired it.

• 4. Banshee and Cinemax

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  Tropper co-created Banshee with David Schickler, and the series ran on Cinemax from 2013 through 2016. Tropper served as an executive producer and wrote seventeen episodes over the run. The collaboration with Cinemax continued when, in October 2017, the network announced a straight-to-series order for Warrior. The show drew on Bruce Lee's original idea and placed its story against the Tong Wars of nineteenth-century San Francisco. It debuted in April 2019 to critical acclaim. Justin Lin, director of multiple Fast and Furious films, and Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee's daughter, both served as executive producers alongside Tropper, who was showrunner. Warrior ran on Cinemax from 2019 through 2023, spanning the transition the series eventually made beyond its original network.

• 5. Television After the Page

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  In 2020, Tropper took over as showrunner and executive producer of See, an Apple TV+ science fiction series starring Jason Momoa, Alfre Woodard, and Dave Bautista; he wrote seven episodes of that show. He also wrote a single episode of the HBO series Vinyl in 2017. The Adam Project, a science fiction thriller starring Ryan Reynolds and directed by Shawn Levy, added to the screenplay credits Tropper built across two decades. His Apple TV+ series Your Friends and Neighbors began in 2025 and remains ongoing, with Tropper as series creator and writer of four episodes. A new series titled Lucky is listed in his television work as series creator, with a 2026 production date, alongside a film credit for Star Wars: Starfighter scheduled for 2027.