HBO Passed on Breaking Bad

hex

hex

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El Villano Ingobernable said:
Son, knowing this has me :francis:

All that succulent pale titty meats. :noah:



They actually bought it, but went with the show Dirt instead. How did that go for them? :mjlol:



Oh, I know. But this show was definitely right up HBO’s alley. I’m just surprised they didn’t take a chance. I’m :dead: at reading these popular shows were turned down by them and went on to Be successful.


I think it had to do with the way Vince talks. He’s a very mild mannered man who speaks very calmly.

@hex , you think the pitch sounds wack? :dahell:

“A recently fired straight laced chemistry teacher finds out he has cancer. He decides To cook meth to make money.” I woulda been like, “go on. :jbhmm:“
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In a reductive sort of way, yeah. It would've been better to explain how the show is in the vein of something like "Macbeth".

That's why it was so difficult to get it on a network. If I remember correctly the other network besides AMC to show interest was FX....and they said if they green lighted it they would be fired. :mjlol:

Fred.
 
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hex said:
In a reductive sort of way, yeah. It would've been better to explain how the show is in the vein of something like "Macbeth".

That's why it was so difficult to get it on a network. If I remember correctly the other network besides AMC to show interest was FX....and they said if they green lighted it they would be fired. :mjlol:

Fred.
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Nah, that was TNT. They were very interested in the show, but they knew the network would never do it.
 
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FX Chief Regrets Passing on 'Breaking Bad'

Yet every executive tasked with picking hits out of a constant stream of ideas has regrets, and tales of The One that Got Away. For Landgraf, that show is AMC’s Breaking Bad, which would have fit in nicely right alongside the anti-hero dramas that built the network. In fact, Landgraf says it was the channel’s similar programming that was precisely the reason the network passed on the show. So the network instead chose the dark legal drama Damages, starring Glenn Close, and that became a different kind of victory.


“Of course I wish that I hadn’t passed on Breaking Bad,” Landgraf told reporters at the Television Critics Association’s press tour in Pasadena, California on Thursday. “I wish it were a part of the FX brand and legacy instead of AMC’s. But I’m also really glad that we picked up Damages. Damages didn’t turn out to be as important a show culturally or in television as Breaking Bad was but we made a conscious decision that with three shows revolving around white male antiheroes — The Shield, Nip/Tuck and Rescue Me — that it wasn’t a big enough ambition to hold the brand in the long run. We have been the first, frankly, to bring a female movie star of Glenn Close’s stature to television. We flew to her apartment and convinced her to come to be a part of The Shield … And even though that show didn’t win four Emmys in sequence for best drama and it didn’t ultimately win an Emmy as Breaking Bad did, it set the stage for our ambition to bring great female actors [to TV]. We’ve actually had more nominations for mature women than any other brand in television for the last decade. We’ve been relentlessly trying to bring Minnie Driver and Jessica Lange and Kathy Bates and Margo Martindale. We’ve been working on this for a long time. I think the roots of that were in Damages.”


It’s also easy to forget that the premise behind Breaking Bad seemed incredibly bleak when it was first announced — a drama about a man dying of cancer who sells meth. The show also wasn’t a ratings success for its first few years on the air. So while FX may have passed on the series, this was one title that nobody even considered success until years after it launched.
 
wire28

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hex said:
Yeah I've seen this mentioned a few times.

To be fair the premise sounds terrible. Broke high school chemistry teacher has cancer and sells meth. The shyt damn near sounds like a trolling pitch.
I remember Vince Gilligan said the HBO people was sitting there like :beli: during the whole pitch and then politely but firmly asked them to leave.:mjlol:

Fred.
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thats what i came in to say

most people would laugh that premise out the room
 
CreepyMcCreeperson

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The only thing HBO would have added was titties. That also may have changed the casting, considering who was willing to do those scenes. I know they had a body double for Lena when Cersei did the nude walk through the city. (Terrible CGI by the way)


Lootpack said:
HBO probably would've found a way to get Vice Principal Carmen naked, and while I'd be there for it, it wouldn't contribute anything to the plot.

Think AMC did a great job all in all. The lack of swearing made scenes more impactful when the characters actually did swear. The cinematography is still some of the best we've seen yet.
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I think the ability to get the emotions and intensity of the scenes to that level without profanity adds to the value of the writing and acting.
 
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