The 'Breaking Bad' Movie Will Have Aaron Paul Returning As Jesse Pinkman

Breaking Bad is the most influential/important/critically acclaimed live-action modern TV dramas. Yes, Game of Thrones is a tour de force, and sure, there are plenty of other amazing shows out there, but BB is still the king. Which is why it isn't surprising that the show's creator, Vince Gilligan, is reportedly developing a movie based on the series.

I think this is great news, Breaking Bad is so good, it gave birth to a spin-off show, Better Call Saul, which not only doesn't suck, but is downright awesome. I actually have friends who prefer BCS to BB, who praise the auxiliary series' writing and plot development over BB's.

Now, those friends are wrong, but it doesn't change the fact that, when handled correctly, derivative works set in the Breaking Bad world can work really well. The real question is, what's this movie going to be like?

If you haven't seen the show, spoiler alert, the only way Bryan Cranston's character, Walter White AKA Heisenberg, is ever coming back in a Breaking Bad movie is if the movie takes place as a prequel of some sort or an ancillary story that occurred before the series' finale. It would be a shame if he somehow wasn't worked into the movie. I mean, he is Anthony Hopkins' favorite actor and all.

While the end of the series pretty much confirms that White won't be in the upcoming film, Cranston has spoken a bit about the movie on The Dan Patrick Show. He said that he would "absolutely" be in the film if Vince Gilligan asked him to be in it. He sounds just as, if not more excited about the film than BB fans:

"It's a great story and there are a lot of people who felt that they wanted to see some kind of completion to some of these storylines that were left open. This idea, from what I'm told, gets into those — at least a couple of the character show were not completed, as far as their journey. I don't know if there's an appearance [of my character] — flashbacks, flash forwards — but I'm excited about it because it's Breaking Bad and it was the greatest professional period of my life and I can't wait to see all those people again, even if I just come by to visit."

Jesse Pinkman is a character who defied odds. He originally was supposed to die in Season 1, but the creators of the show loved the chemistry between him and Bryan so much, they decided to keep him on, and the rest is TV history.

However since none of the show's stars nor creator Vince Gilligan has commented on the status of the film, we can't know for sure whether Jesse is in it. But a logline for the film that the Albuquerque Journal got its hands on does seemingly open up a possibility for a Pinkman appearance. The film apparently "... tracks the escape of a kidnapped man and his quest for freedom."

I don't know if you remember the series finale, but that's pretty much Jesse Pinkman right there.

Update: And thanks to the handy-dandy work from the peeps over at SlashFilm, it's been pretty much confirmed that the "escaped man" is actually Pinkman. Looks like we'll finally get some questions answers as to what happens to Jesse after he escapes the evil clutches of neo-Nazis who kidnapped and forced him to cook meth for them.

If you've got an account or have been mooching off of your friends for some time, then you'll be happy to know that you'll be able to stream it (exclusively) right when the film drops. It'll then eventually make its way to AMC, which only seems right, seeing as the network gifted us this amazing TV show in the first place.

It's always worrying whenever a show or movie's creator leaves their baby (just ask Walking Dead fans how they feel) and someone else continues their work, basically just reheating whatever formula people responded positively to in the past.

Thankfully, Vince is reportedly attached to the Breaking Bad movie, and there's even a tentative title for it: Greenbriar. That might change, and we're not sure whether the two-hour drama is destined for the big-screen, straight-to-streaming, or television, but we do know production is supposed to start in the middle of November and last until February. I don't know about you, but I'd be totally down to see a story of Pinkman post-escape.

Vince has been penned as a writer for the project as well, which should make fans of the series very, very happy.

Unlike the Breaking Bad movie, The Walking Dead isn't forging ahead on the cinema front with its original director, Frank Darabont, at the helm. The show's been castigated for quite some time as being unoriginal and relying on cheap tricks and tropes to surprise its audience.

They recently pulled that stunt again the main character Rick Grimes, whom they managed to excise from the show, only to develop a trilogy movie series featuring his character in the world of post-apocalyptic zombie destruction.

That's right, the Sheriff with a heart of gold who served as The Walking Dead's frontman for so many years won't be on the program anymore, but only because he's getting a three movie deal on AMC that will tell "an original Rick Grimes story."

Although Darabont isn't attached, the first Grimes movie will be written by Scott Gimple, former showrunner for the series. They'll also, naturally, have higher production budgets than the show's singular episodes, so expect some high-quality zombie killing action.