As a concept, taking the world of Breaking Bad and creating a video game from the series is an enticing one. It’s a concept that Vince Gilligan, the showrunner of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, had even pitched to industry professionals at one stage. The idea was simple – would it be possible to create a video game in the style of Grand Theft Auto – and import the story of Breaking Bad into this format?
Gilligan certainly had ambitions for the concept at one time – and he revealed details of the idea (thanks to Comic Book) during the latest episode of “Inside the Gilliverse” podcast with Peter Gould and host Eric Broadbent. As the conversation steered toward video games – Gilligan admitted that he wasn’t “much of a video game player, but how can you not know Grand Theft Auto.”
“I remember saying to the guys, that are off running Apple now, who said yes originally to Breaking Bad, ‘Who owns Grand Theft Auto? Can’t you have a module, can there be a Breaking Bad [game]?’ [It] still makes sense to me! That never came to fruition.” he continued.
Despite a lack of success in making a game based on AMC’s hit crime drama, Gilligan confirmed there had “been quite a few attempts at video games, some of them kind of made it to market. We tried to do a VR experience with the Sony PlayStation VR headset. We did a mobile game that lasted for a little while.”
Gilligan further explained that video game production is not time-consuming for his team but also a costly endeavour too. Plus, Broadbent points out that the name alone mightn’t be enough to sell a game – if the content isn’t up to scratch. Case in point, Peter Gould, the co-creator of Better Call Saul, weighs into the conversation and mentions the case of an E.T game for the Atari – and we all know how that ended.
