Netflix has announced that it will release a Breaking Bad film, centred on Aaron Paul’s mercurial meth cook Jesse Pinkman, nearly six years after 10.3 million Americans tuned in to watch the show’s finale.
Fans were at fever pitch hours before Netflix made the announcement when it was discovered that a “movie card” for the film could be found on the streaming service’s official site, confirming the project’s existence after years of speculation.
But Netflix has provided zero plot spoilers. “In the wake of his dramatic escape from captivity, Jesse must come to terms with his past in order to forge some kind of future,” it said.
The film is called El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie. It was written and directed by the show’s creator Vince Gilligan and will be released on Netflix on 11 October. It is also expected to be broadcast on AMC, the cable network that first brought the show to screens from 2008-2013.
It will be the first time we have seen Pinkman since he sped off-screen in a stolen Chevrolet El Camino having just been rescued from an Aryan Brotherhood gang by his one-time partner Walter White (Bryan Cranston).
To fans, that episode seemed like a full stop: with drug kingpin White collapsing on the floor of his Quonset hut-turned-meth lab just moments before police burst in with guns drawn as the credits started to roll, fans believed this would be the last time they would see many of the show’s most iconic characters.
In an interview, Aaron Paul made it clear that the film was as much a revelation to him as it would be to fans of the show as he believed he had said goodbye to the Breaking Bad universe after that finale.
“It was a hard, emotional thing for all of us,” Paul said. “And when the finale happened, we all got together and hugged it out and said ‘I love you’. And that was it.”
But the thirst for new Breaking Bad material never quite went away.
A spin-off prequel, Better Call Saul, following the story of conman and small-time lawyer Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) premiered in 2015 and has so far garnered 23 Emmy awards, 7 Writers Guild of America awards, 5 Critics’ Choice Television awards, a Screen Actors Guild award and two Golden Globe awards.
Paul said he could understand if audiences were wary of revisiting Breaking Bad but that any doubt he had dissipated when he finished reading Gilligan’s script. “El Camino was a chapter of Bad that I didn’t realise that I wanted. And now that I have it, I’m so happy that it’s there,” he said.
“I couldn’t speak for a good 30, 60 seconds I was just lost in my thoughts. As the guy who played the guy, I was so happy that Vince wanted to take me on this journey.”
In the teaser trailer, Jesse’s friend and former colleague Skinny Pete (Charles Baker) is seen being interrogated about Jesse’s whereabouts.
“I don’t know where he’s headed,” he says. “North, south, west, east, Mexico, the moon. I don’t have a clue.”
Fans will have to wait and see if Cranston will return as Walter White in El Camino. They were sent into overdrive after Cranston and Paul mysteriously tweeted out the same picture with the caption “soon” in June.
When asked, Paul said he once again had to remain silent on the subject: “All I can say, I think people will be really happy with what they see.”
