Brian Robbins

Person

Credits

Brian Robbins is a former actor and director. In 2018, he became the president of Viacom's Nickelodeon division. He replaced Cyma Zarghami, who had worked at Nick for most of her career (since 1985). Since his hiring, Robbins has managed various promotions for the SpongeBob SquarePants franchise.

Unhappy that SpongeBob "always stayed the same," Robbins came up with multiple of his own spin-off ideas for the show. He announced the first, Kamp Koral, in February 2019 (just months after the passing of series creator Stephen Hillenburg).

Robbins is a strong proponent of low-cost "unscripted reality" television, and the first Nick series he greenlit was a hidden-camera prank show called The Substitute. The third episode of The Substitute attracted controversy for using a fan-edited SpongeBob poster pulled from Google Images; the gaffe was attributed to the show's intentionally low production values.

Biography

He first worked as an actor and director. He is the current president (2018-present) of Viacom's Nickelodeon division. He is also one of the creators of the sketch show All That.

In February 2019, Robbins announced that he would order spin-offs of the SpongeBob series, the first being a show about a younger SpongeBob at camp called Kamp Koral. This was met with negative fan backlash because Stephen Hillenburg was strongly against both aging down SpongeBob's character and making spin-offs of his series.

Trivia

• Robbins thinks that SpongeBob could be Nickelodeon's equivalent to the Marvel Universe, so he wants to continue to market and extend the franchise.

References