'Better Call Saul' Premiere News: Vince Gilligan Talks Bob Odenkirk Character Being A 'Cockroach' & Doing Spinoff For Creative Reasons [VIDEO]
While TV spinoffs have often been bad ideas, Breaking Bad show runner Vince Gilligan recently said that the reasoning behind Better Call Saul is a creative one, not necessarily a commercial one.
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Better Call Saul is slated to premiere this Sunday on AMC and while the show has inevitably been compared to Breaking Bad, Gilligan seems confident in the show standing out on its own. He spoke with Time about the decision to make the spinoff and how there were actually many more reasons not to do it.
"The reasons not to first and foremost would be unflattering comparisons to the original mothership series-the idea of doing a spinoff that would be poorly received and feel like something that was done strictly for commerce, strictly for mercenary reasons and not for creatively valid reasons," he explained. "But we just love the character. We love writing for him. It's fun to put words in Saul Goodman's mouth or in this case, Jimmy McGill's mouth. It's fun to peek inside his head and put that dialogue in his mouth. Time will tell if that was a bad idea or a good one, but that was reason enough to go forward."
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The new series centers on Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk) before he became "Saul Goodman." Odenkirk is reprising his role from Breaking Bad and starring as Jimmy McGill, a lawyer just starting out in the business and working with Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks). Gilligan spoke on the ending for Saul in Breaking Bad, which had him running off and changing his identity yet again.
Ultimately, it just proved how much of a cockroach the character is, with a strong ability to adapt to his surroundings and not get killed.
"No matter what nuclear holocaust or plague may occur, this character's going to wind up scurrying out into the sunlight after everybody else is gone," he said.
Better Call Saul is slated to premiere Sunday, Feb. 8 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on AMC.
