Burnie Burns Net Worth

What is Burnie Burns's Net Worth?

Burnie Burns is an American actor, writer, director, and media executive who has a net worth of $5 million. An innovator in the machinima animation technique, Burnie Burns came to prominence in 2003 as a co-creator of the popular web series "Red vs. Blue," which was made using the video game "Halo: Combat Evolved." Through his Rooster Teeth Productions, he later created such series as "The Strangerhood" and "P.A.N.I.C.S.," and co-wrote and starred in the feature films "Lazer Team" and "Lazer Team 2."

Early Life and Education

Burnie Burns was born Michael Burns on January 18, 1973, in Rochester, New York, and was raised in Houston, Texas. He is of partial French-Canadian ancestry. As a teenager, Burns attended Alief Elsik High School, and in his senior year, did clinical rotations at Southwest Memorial Hospital with the goal of pursuing a medical career. For college, he went to the University of Texas at Austin after being unable to afford tuition at the University of Notre Dame. At Texas, Burns volunteered at Texas Student Television and founded "Sneak Peek," which became the longest-running student television show in the world. He graduated with his bachelor's degree in computer science.

Career Beginnings

In his final year of college, Burns partnered with his roommates Joel Heyman and Matt Hullum to shoot a 16 mm film called "The Schedule." The film was edited on a non-linear editor Burns had built himself. Due to difficulties finding distribution, the filmmaking trio eventually parted ways, with Burns becoming the president of the tech support company teleNetwork Partners. There, he met his future collaborators Gus Sorola and Geoff Ramsey. The trio had their first viral video in 2002 with a parody of Apple's Switchers campaign.

Red vs. Blue

Following their first viral video together, Burns, Sorola, and Ramsey collaborated on drunkgamers.com, with Burns adding voiceovers to the website's gameplay videos. All three guys were huge fans of the first-person shooter video game "Halo: Combat Evolved," leading to the idea for "Red vs. Blue," a parody web series set within the "Halo" universe. To produce the show, Burns co-founded the company Rooster Teeth Productions. Using the machinima animation technique of synchronizing video game footage to other recorded dialogue and audio, "Red vs. Blue" premiered in the spring of 2003 to great popularity and acclaim. Its original run, dubbed "The Blood Gulch Chronicles," ran for five seasons and 100 episodes through mid-2007. "Red vs. Blue" had multiple more story arcs after that, running for a total of 19 seasons with six miniseries and a film.

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Further Rooster Teeth Creations

In the wake of the success of "Red vs. Blue," Burns and Matt Hullum created the comedy web series "The Strangerhood" in 2004. Also utilizing the machinima technique, the series used the social simulation video game "The Sims 2" as its basis and served as a parody of reality television and sitcoms. The original run of "The Strangerhood" lasted from 2004 to 2006; there was later a revived series in 2015. After the original run of that series, Burns co-created his third machinima series, "P.A.N.I.C.S.," using the first-person shooter horror video game "F.E.A.R." This was a miniseries consisting of five episodes. Later, he turned to live action when he wrote the miniseries "Captain Dynamic" as promotion for the online MMORPG "City of Heroes." The success of the series led Burns to produce a new live-action sketch comedy series called "Rooster Teeth Shorts," featuring the entire staff of Rooster Teeth Productions playing caricatures of themselves.

In late 2008, Burns co-hosted the first episode of the podcast "Drunk Tank" with his Rooster Teeth colleagues Gus Sorola and Geoff Ramsey. Featuring humorous commentary on contemporary popular culture, the highly popular podcast was renamed "The Rooster Teeth Podcast" in 2011. It has released new episodes every Wednesday since 2009. Meanwhile, in 2010, Burns began co-hosting the show "Immersion" with Ramsey. A couple of years later, Rooster Teeth partnered with the media platform Blip to create the reality competition game show "The Gauntlet." Another game show, "Million Dollars, But…," was launched by Rooster Teeth in 2015. That same year saw the release of Rooster Teeth's first feature film, the science-fiction action comedy "Lazer Team." Funded via Indiegogo, it collected $2.4 million to become the highest-funded film campaign ever on the site. Burns co-wrote and starred in the film, and did the same for the 2017 sequel "Lazer Team 2."

Other Work

Beyond Rooster Teeth, Burns appeared in the 2015 film "The Outfield" and the 2016 YouTube Red anthology series "12 Deadly Days." Also in 2015, he competed alongside his then-girlfriend Ashley Jenkins in the 28th season of the reality competition show "The Amazing Race," with the pair coming in fourth place. In late 2023, following a period of time away from the spotlight, Burns launched the daily podcast "Morning Somewhere" with Jenkins, now his wife.

Personal Life

Burns married his first wife, Jordan, in 2000. They divorced in late 2011. Burns went on to date actress and Internet personality Ashley Jenkins, whom he married in 2019. The pair moved to Scotland, revealing their location via their podcast in late 2023. Burns has three sons and a daughter in total.

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