Last night, in the midst of a massive U.S. election, some pretty huge entertainment news also dropped with the leak that a Breaking Bad movie is not only in the works, it starts filming this month. Details were scant, but we were able to confirm that Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan wrote and is executive producing said movie, which would “track the escape of a kidnapped man and his quest for freedom.” Would this be another prequel in the vein of the phenomenal AMC series Better Call Saul? Would it be a sequel following one of the ancillary characters from Breaking Bad? Would it reveal that Bryan Cranston’s Walter White became reanimated and is now leading a zombie apocalypse? There were a lot of questions.
And now we may have some answers, as /Film is reporting that the likeliest scenario is probably true: the Breaking Bad movie picks up with Aaron Paul’s Jesse Pinkman following the events of the series finale as he attempts to escape Albuquerque. If you’ll recall, the end of Breaking Bad saw Jesse abducted and held prisoner by those darned neo-Nazis, who wanted him to cook that sweet Heisenberg meth while Walter White was in the wind. As you well know, Walter came to the rescue complete with a machine gun in tow and decimated the neo-Nazis, and while it seemed for a minute there that a now-free Jesse might finally put a bullet in Walter's head, he instead decided to make a run for it. The last we saw of him, he was driving his car at full-speed through a fence, in disbelief that he may finally be free.
In the wake of the series finale, Gilligan spoke at length about Jesse’s final moments, pondering whether Jesse really did make it out alive or if he was caught and captured. It appears we’ll get to find out as part of this Breaking Bad movie, but it’ll be interesting to see exactly what this is.
Fresh off of Andrew Lincoln’s exit from The Walking Dead on Sunday, AMC announced a trilogy of Walking Dead movies starring Lincoln that are due to air on the network in the coming years. AMC is working to expand its franchise horizons as competition grows from streaming services, and it’s possible this Breaking Bad movie is part of that plan. Whether that means this film will also air only on AMC or if it’ll get a theatrical release is unclear, as Sony Pictures own Breaking Bad and is behind this film while The Walking Dead is owned by AMC Studios outright. That means there’s far more flexibility with this Breaking Bad movie, and frankly also means it won’t be a shameless ploy to draw more eyeballs to the cable network, which has been sorely lacking in critically acclaimed hits following the conclusions of Breaking Bad and Mad Men.
Even though production on the Breaking Bad movie begins this month, it’s still unclear who’s directing this thing (I'm hoping it's Gilligan). Paul has a busy schedule coming up as he’s due to join Westworld Season 3, but it appears he’ll be squeezing in his long-awaited reprisal of Jesse Pinkman before venturing to the HBO sci-fi series.
Stay tuned, folks. There’s no doubt a lot more to learn here in the coming weeks.
