page_title: El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
section_title: Writing
hierarchical_section_title: El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie / Production / Writing
caption_attribution_description: English: Peter Gould speaking at the 2018 San Diego Comic-Con International in San Diego, California.
context_page_description: El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie is a 2019 American neo-Western crime thriller film that serves as a sequel and epilogue to the television series Breaking Bad, which followed chemistry teacher Walter White partnering with a former student Jesse Pinkman to become kingpins in the production of crystal meth. Series creator Vince Gilligan wrote, directed, and produced the film, while Aaron Paul reprised his role as Jesse Pinkman. The plot follows Pinkman and the events that immediately follow the series finale. Several actors involved in the television series reprise their roles, including Jesse Plemons, Robert Forster, Charles Baker, Matt Jones, Jonathan Banks, Krysten Ritter, and Bryan Cranston. El Camino was also one of Forster's final film appearances, as he died on the day of its release.
  Gilligan first began considering the story of El Camino during the filming of the final season of Breaking Bad. Gilligan approached Paul with the idea in 2017, near the tenth anniversary of Breaking Bad, and filming began in secret in New Mexico in November 2018, lasting nearly 50 days. The project remained unconfirmed until August 2019, when Netflix released a trailer.
context_section_description: The original idea for continuing Jesse Pinkman's story began as a "mini-episode" or a short film of about 15–20 minutes. Realizing that a short would not be cost-effective, Gilligan opted to make a full-length feature film. The script quickly grew to the length of an hour-long episode and eventually to two hours.
  One early suggestion Gilligan received was altering his proposed title – Gilligan originally had the idea of calling the project '63, referring to its unofficial status as the 63rd episode of Breaking Bad. When pitching story ideas with the Better Call Saul staff, he was advised by executive producer Thomas Schnauz to change it in order to let it stand on its own from the original series. Schnauz reasoned with Gilligan that Breaking Bad was in essence Walter White's story, whereas the film and its title should be unique in order to reflect that they were about Jesse Pinkman. Gilligan agreed and eventually settled on the title El Camino, referring to Todd's car that Jesse drives away with in "Felina".
  Gilligan believed that, because El Camino was a coda to Breaking Bad, it would primarily appeal to fans and would not be as enjoyable to those who had not watched the series. This influenced his decision to write the film as a direct continuation rather than inserting exposition scenes to try to attract new audiences. He later stated that the film could be viewed independently from both Breaking Bad and its spinoff Better Call Saul, similarly to how the two series could be viewed independently from one another. However, he also believed that the three works existed together in a larger framework and that viewers would need to watch all of them together to receive the full experience.
  Unlike most of his work from The X-Files and Breaking Bad, when he worked with one or more co-writers, Gilligan wrote the El Camino screenplay alone until he was ready to present it. When thinking of which Breaking Bad characters to use for the film, Gilligan considered bringing back Skyler White, Walter Jr., Hank and Marie Schrader, Gus Fring, and Saul Goodman but could not find a way to incorporate them into Jesse's story. An early scrapped concept included bringing back Uncle Jack as a ghost that would goad Jesse throughout his journey, but Gilligan discarded this idea as too dreary as he felt that Jesse had already suffered enough. Of the characters that he ended up using, Gilligan was most excited to bring back Todd Alquist, stating he was still fascinated by the character and wished he could have been further explored on the series. Jesse Plemons, who portrayed Todd, expressed surprise at his deceased character's sizable role in the film upon first reading the script and likened his scenes with Jesse to a dark buddy comedy.
  Upon completion of the script's first draft, Gilligan met with the writing staff of Better Call Saul, which was still airing at the time. The purpose of the meeting was to not only ensure that the two projects' continuity would not interfere with one another but to also take in suggestions to improve his script. One change from this meeting was the decision to include Jane Margolis. The character was not initially in the story but after Saul showrunner Peter Gould read the first draft, he suggested that she could appear in the ending, "where it would mean the most to the audience". After thinking about the suggestion for a couple of weeks, Gilligan incorporated the idea into his script. Jane ultimately delivered the final lines of the film.
  One of the biggest elements removed in later drafts was one of the first things that Gilligan wrote for the script: the contents of Jesse's letter to Brock. Gilligan had planned on having it read in voice-over while Jesse drove through Alaska in the final scene; Paul described it as "the most honest, beautiful, caring letter imaginable — really, just pouring his heart out and saying he's sorry". While the Better Call Saul staff praised the letter's contents, Gould and several others felt it would be better left to the audience's imagination to determine what Jesse wrote. Gil
caption: Peter Gould and the Better Call Saul writing staff were consulted after Gilligan finished the script's first draft.
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