El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, a project that was successfully (and rather impressively) crafted in secret, makes its Netflix premiere Oct. 11. Ahead of the launch of a more "detailed" tease of the two-hour feature during this week's Emmys broadcast, The Hollywood Reporter has gotten its hands on some intel regarding the continuation of the Breaking Bad saga straight from creator Vince Gilligan and star Aaron Paul.
The movie picks up where the original series left off, with Paul's character Jesse having escaped an Aryan Brotherhood compound where Walter White died. Fans can expect to see "more than 10 familiar characters" from the original series, including Skinny Pete and Badger. As for the story, Gilligan told THR it first started coming together during production on Breaking Bad.
"I didn't really tell anybody about it, because I wasn't sure I would ever do anything with it," he said. "But I started thinking to myself, 'What happened to Jesse?' You see him driving away. And to my mind, he went off to a happy ending. But as the years progressed, I thought, 'What did that ending—let's just call it an ending, neither happy, nor sad—what did it look like?'"
In 2018, Gilligan started telling people about his idea, which was then being posited as a possible five-minute short. He quickly realized, however, that he had a feature-length story to tell. Speaking on the theatrical elements of the original series and the enlightening experience of seeing each season premiere in that setting, Gilligan said he realized he wanted to share that cinematic togetherness with fans.
"I always thought, 'This thing, it looks like a movie. It doesn't look like a show,'" he said.
Fans are notably being treated with respect in El Camino, as Gilligan's story doesn't bog itself down with bothering to catch up viewers who may have somehow skipped out on the original series. "We don't slow down to explain things to a non-Breaking Bad audience," he said.
Paul, who had accepted that this chapter of his career was over prior to Gilligan informing him of his movie plans, conceded that he's "like everybody else on the planet" in that he felt the series' ending was sufficient. His trust for Gilligan’s vision, however, inspired him to leap back into the Breaking Bad universe.
"I would follow Vince into a fire," he said. "That's how much I trust the man. I would do anything that he asked me to."
Catch the full THR feature on El Camino, the bulk of which was shot over 50 days in Albuquerque, right here. Fans should note that Rebecca Keegan's piece also includes a bit about using a private jet to "shuttle a key castmember in and out," which may or may not be signaling a surprise cameo.
The movie drops on Netflix Oct. 11. Fittingly, fans will also have the chance to see Gilligan's feature in select theaters in 68 cities including Los Angeles, Albuquerque, New York, and more. Ticket info can be found here.
