AMC’s Saul Goodman/Breaking Bad spinoff is one step closer to becoming a real thing. After weeks of negotiating, the network and Sony have signed an agreement to do the show. AMC and Sony said in a joint statement that the show’s working title is Better Call Saul and that “plans call for Saul to be a one-hour prequel that will focus on the evolution of the popular Saul Goodman character [played by Bob Odenkirk] before he ever became Walter White’s lawyer.” The network won’t say any more about the show’s status, but it reportedly has a series order once deals are completed with Odenkirk and the creative team.
Breaking Bad writer/producer Peter Gould is set to run the series. Gould created the character when he wrote the season two episode in which Saul first appeared. Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan will remain involved. If AMC had passed on the show, other distributors like Netflix were ready to make offers. Odenkirk first mentioned the spinoff publicly in November of last year, with reports about the show surfacing in April. Odenkirk told us in an interview this week, “Vince [Gilligan] actually does have an idea about this show and the tone of the show and what would be worthwhile about it and stuff.”
In a July interview, Gilligan mentioned he wasn’t sure whether to make the series a half-hour sitcom or an hour-long comedy-drama:
“There’s a way to do both versions of the show. There’s a way to make it a half-hour show and make it a little more — I don’t want to say sitcom-y, but a little more traditionally half-hour comedic. Or there’s a way to do it where it fits more snuggly in with the Breaking Bad universe, in which it’s an hour-long show. As you can imagine with Saul Goodman as a character, a show like that would have to have plenty of humor to it. But also because he works for some pretty scary clientele sometimes, there’d be a bit of drama in it as well.”
Clearly, since the show is an hour long, he went with the latter. And that’s right, Better Call Saul is a prequel, so the show’s existence doesn’t tip off whether Saul Goodman makes it out of these final episodes alive or not.
