Lee Sung Jin

Lee Sung Jin was born in South Korea in 1981.^[3] His family moved frequently in his youth; he moved to the United States when he was nine months old and returned to South Korea for third through fifth grade.^[4] In sixth grade he moved from Seoul to Minnesota, United States.^[5] He also lived in Illinois, Louisiana, Iowa, and Texas.^[6] He recalls it as “a horrible time to have a name no one can pronounce" and chose to go by "Sonny" instead.^[7]

Lee attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he sang in an a cappella group.^[8] He graduated in 2003 with a degree in economics.^[9][4]

After graduating from college, Lee moved to Los Angeles and worked a variety of part-time jobs while writing scripts.^[4] He interned at the record label Barsuk Records.^[8] He wrote for the series Undone, Tuca & Bertie, Dave, and Silicon Valley.^[7] In 2008, he worked as a staff writer and executive story editor for It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.^[4]

He was inspired to create Beef by a road-rage confrontation with a middle-aged white man in Los Angeles.^[10] "I thought there was something interesting there—how we're all locked in our subjective world views, and we go around projecting a lot on the other person and not really seeing things for what they are", he said of the incident.^[11] He also served as director, executive producer, and showrunner on the series, forced to remotely direct scenes for the season finale "with my face on an iPad" because of a COVID-19 infection.^[1][12]

In August 2023, he visited South Korea to speak at a conference on the creation of films. He said he had not been to South Korea for around 25 years, since his childhood.^[3]

In November 2023, Variety reported that Lee had signed a multiyear deal to produce content for Netflix.^[1]

In 2023, Lee was reported to have joined the 2025 Marvel Cinematic Universe film Thunderbolts* as a writer, saying in an interview, "I'm rewriting it."^[13] In a later interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he said he was "working off an existing script from Eric Pearson and I did my pass on it" before stepping away from the project and handing it off to Joanna Calo, who worked with him on Beef.^[14] The film credits the screenplay to Pearson and Calo, with the story by Pearson.^[15] According to the Writers Guild of America West, Lee received credit for "Additional Literary Material".^[16]

Lee wrote, directed, and produced the video for BTS leader RM's "Come Back to Me", a prerelease track from his second solo album, Right Place, Wrong Person, released in 2024.^[17]

In April 2026, it was confirmed by Jake Schreier that Lee Sung Jin was co-writing the screenplay for the upcoming X-Men film being produced by Marvel Studios alongside Joanna Calo after the pair previously worked on Thunderbolts*, revising the original script by Michael Lesslie.^[18] The same month, he renewed his overall deal with Netflix.^[19]

Lee lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Caty Solone, and three dogs.^[6][20][21] He plays the violin, guitar, and piano.^[9]

Film

More information Year, Title ...

Year	Title	Director	Writer	Notes
2025	Thunderbolts*	No	Uncredited	Additional Literary Material[16]

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Television

More information Year, Title ...

Year	Title	Creator	Director	Writer	Executive producer	Notes
2007–2008	Rob & Big	No	No	Consultant Writer	No	24 episodes
2008–2009	It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia	No	No	Executive Story Editor	No	26 episodes
2010	Mothman	Yes	No	Yes	No	TV movie; co-screenwriter
2010–2014	2 Broke Girls	No	No	Yes	No	7 episodes
2015	Silicon Valley	No	No	Yes	No	Episode: "Server Space"
2016	The Real O'Neals	No	No	Yes	No	Episode: "The Real Book Club"
2018	Tuca & Bertie	No	No	Yes	No	2 episodes
2021	Dave	No	No	Yes	No	2 episodes
2023–present	Beef	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Also showrunner; director: "Figures of Light"

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Music videos

More information Year, Artist ...

Year	Artist	Title	Director	Writer	Producer	Notes
2024	RM	"Come Back to Me"	Yes	Yes	Yes

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