Adam Frederick Goldberg is an American television and film producer and writer, best known as the creator and showrunner of the television series Breaking In, Imaginary Mary, Schooled, and The Goldbergs, the last of which is a biopic of his own childhood.
Early life and work
Goldberg was born to a Jewish family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and lived in nearby Jenkintown. His parents are Beverly and the late Murray Goldberg ; he is the youngest of three boys, with brothers Barry and Eric. He produced his first play, Dr. Pickup, in 1992 at the age of 15, and won the Philadelphia Young Playwrights Festival. He graduated from the William Penn Charter School in 1994 and graduated from New York University in 1998 after double-majoring in film and dramatic writing. By 1995, he had written over 50 plays which were performed around the country including the Sundance Playwrights Lab, the Illusion Theater, The Greenwich Street Theater, The Saint Marks Theatre, The Tada! Theater, The Walnut Street Theater and the Joseph Papp Theater. He was the 1995 Anne M. Kaufman Endowment ARTS Awardee in the National Foundation for the Advancement in the Arts program for Playwriting. He was a finalist for the American Theater Critics Association's 1997 Osborn Award for his full-length play, One on One. His dramedy The Purple Heart was produced by the Institute for Arts and Education at the Annenberg Theater and also won first place in The Very Special Arts Playwriting Award and was produced at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
Screenwriting
Goldberg's first comedy-writing job began in 2003 for the sitcom Still Standing, where he worked for four years and finished as a co-producer. After his first year on Still Standing, he teamed up with Picture Machine, Triggerstreet, and college friend Kyle Newman to develop the screenplay for Fanboys. After a year, they sold it to The Weinstein Company. The screenplay ended up seventh on the 2005 Black List for most popular unproduced scripts of the year. After the success of Fanboys, Goldberg was hired to write the screenplays for The Jetsons; a 2007 remake of Revenge of the Nerds starring Adam Brody, which was cancelled after three weeks of filming; Aliens in the Attic; and The Muppets' Wizard of Oz. He also spent a year writing on DreamWorks Animation's How to Train Your Dragon, before moving over to write as well as the 2011 How to Train Your Dragon Christmas special, Gift of the Night Fury. He is currently adapting the graphic novelSeal Team 7 for director Shawn Levy, and bringing the book Simon Bloom: Gravity Keeper to the screen for Walden Media. Goldberg has also produced several movies, including The Comebacks, Daddy Day Camp, Bobism, Jeff the Immortal and a remake of Night of the Living Dorks
Television
On the television side, Goldberg teamed up with Adam Sandler's production company Happy Madison to write four pilots for various networks. In 2010, Happy Madison introduced him to King of Kong director Seth Gordon and together they created the 2011 Foxcomedy seriesBreaking In. The show was pitched as "The Office meets The A-Team" and, after a year of development, was picked up to series. Prior to Breaking In, Goldberg also wrote on the shows Aliens in America, Secret Girlfriend, Voltron Force, WordGirl and Kevin Williamson's Glory Days. In 2011, Goldberg signed a three-year overall deal with Sony Pictures TV. During this time, Goldberg was a producer on NBC's Community while developing new projects. In 2012, Goldberg got a pilot commitment to shoot an autobiographical show about his family titled How the F--- Am I Normal?, and also reunited with Fox on a pilot starring AJ Michalka and Sean Giambrone. The autobiographical show was picked up by ABC with a title change to The Goldbergs. He also co-created Imaginary Mary and The Goldbergs' spinoff series Schooled for ABC.
On July 22, 2020, Adam F. Goldberg, along with Uncle Louie, launched challenge coins with the Garbage Pail Kids that sold out in mere minutes. These coins honored famous Garbage Pail kids such as Nasty Nick, Weird Wendy and Wrappin Ruth and were licensed by Topps.
