Breaking Bad: When Creator Vince Gilligan Approached HBO For The Show But The Meeting Turned Out To Be A Nightmare
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Breaking Bad aired on AMC from 2008 to 2013. The show had 5 seasons and gave its viewers a perfect ending. Even though the show came to its conclusion 7 years earlier with Walter White’s death, there are so many people who want it to continue.
Even after the show’s run coming to an end in 2013, it continues to entertain its ever-increasing fan base on Netflix. Breaking Bad’s easily one of the most loved shows of all time but do you know, it was rejected by so many networks before AMC aired it. You won’t believe but even HBO lost the chance of getting the show.
In an interview with EmmyTVLegends.org back in 2011, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan shared that he had his worst ever meeting with HBO for the show. “The trouble with Hollywood – movies and TV – is people will leave you dangling on the end of a meat hook for days or weeks or months on end. That happened at HBO,” he said.
“Like the worst meeting I ever had vs. the TNT meeting … and it was only like a day apart,” he added.
Putting more light on the meeting, Gilligan explained, “The woman we (were) pitching to could not have been less interested—not even in my story, but about whether I actually lived or died.”
Talking about the meeting with TNT, he said that he pitched the story to two executives who loved the idea. However, they thought they would get fired over the meth storyline. They wanted to change the character of Walter White into a counterfeiter.
Apart from these two, Showtime & FX also passed Breaking Bad. FX couldn’t have the show as they felt it was similar to their other shows with male antiheroes.
Breaking Bad starred Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, Anna Gunn, Dean Norris, RJ Mitte, Betsy Brandt, Bob Odenkirk among others. After the end of the show in 2013, it got a spin-off show named Better Call Saul and then a film titled El Camino about its character Jesse was also made in 2019.
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