Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan has revealed there have been “quite a few attempts” at making a video game set within the Breaking Bad universe.
Both Gilligan and Better Call Saul showrunner Peter Gould were recently on the Inside The Gilliverse podcast, where they were asked about making a game in the style of Grand Theft Auto.
Gilligan went on to reveal that he’s “not much of a video game player but how can you not know Grand Theft Auto,” before saying that early on in the creation of Breaking Bad, he’d asked a couple of people “who owns Grand Theft Auto?” with the intention of working together on a project. “It still makes sense to me,” he said.
He added: “There have been quite a few attempts at video games. Some of them kinda made it to market – we tried to do a VR experience with the Sony PlayStation VR headset, we did a mobile game that lasted a little while.”
Gilligan then said that writers had “put a lot of energy and talent into writing three or four stories for different video games.”
“There were a lot of people hours poured into that,” he continued before saying that “making a video game is damn hard. It takes years and millions of dollars, especially when you’re trying to break new ground with VR. It never came to fruition though, which is a shame.”
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He went on to talk about a Breaking Bad inspired slot machine in Las Vegas that he couldn’t find on his last visit to the city. “It must not have been a big hit. It’s the same with video games, you don’t always know what’s going to click with people.”
Gilligan went on to explain that “the way fans love these shows makes us very proud and it’s very humbling. It makes me very cognisant of keeping the brand at as high a level as we can keep it. If you’re going to do a video game, you can’t do (E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial) for the Atari (a game regarded as one of the worst of all time and one of the biggest commercial failures in video game history). You gotta make it great. Execution is everything.”
He finished up by telling fans he “wouldn’t hold your breath about a video game.”
Last month, bronze statues of Breaking Bad characters Walter White and Jesse Pinkman were unveiled in Albuquerque, New Mexico, while the boss of AMC has said the “door is always open” for another Breaking Bad spin-off following Better Call Saul.
In other news, a live-action film based on beloved video game Pac-Man is reportedly in the works.