Sam Ernst

Sam Ernst hasn’t always been a writer. After graduating from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, he knew he wanted to write TV. So, naturally, he opened restaurants and bars. (Something about needing to live some life before he wrote about it.)  It kinda worked, and on New Year’s Eve a few years later, now with two restaurants and bars, he and his college roommate, Jim Dunn, committed to writing TV together. The next morning they met and wrote something instantly forgettable.

An assistant job in LA got them to move west, and soon Sam found himself running errands for a TV writer, and working on the Disney Studios lot, but no closer to an actual writing job. Until he sold a pilot to ABC. Then another. Eventually, he worked as a staff writer on USA Network’s The Dead Zone, until he co-created a show based on a Stephen King novella. Haven ran six seasons on the SyFy network and took him to Comic-Cons around the world. 

Sam has worked with Gillian Anderson and Dermott Mulroney on NBC/20th Century Fox’s Crisis and been co-executive producer on two seasons of Amazon’s Hand of God, starring Ron Perlman and Dana Delaney. After running a writers’ room for a pilot at Amazon, Sam became co-executive producer on Netflix/Marvel’s Daredevil, starring Vincent D'Onofrio and Charlie Cox. He recently consulted on Apple TV’s As You Were Sleeping, starring Octavia Spencer and Aaron Paul.  

Sam has written video games (Shrek the Third, Defense Grid) and pilots for ABC, FX, ABC Signature Studios, Amazon. His next dream is to open a restaurant, and maybe a bar or two.