He's been winning praise for exploring the prior life of Breaking Bad's Saul Goodman in Better Call Saul on TV and Bob Odenkirk is sticking with US cable channel AMC and drama for a new miniseries project. He'll play late New York Times reporter David Carr in Night Of The Gun.
The limited series, based on Carr's own article, will explore how the talented, erudite journalist descended into a crack addiction. It took the prospect of his children being taken into custody to force him to recover and get his life back on track. Tragically, he died of lung cancer and heart disease in February last year.
Shawn Ryan, who made classic cop drama The Shield, is producing and will serve as the main writer on the series alongside Eileen Myers, who has collaborated with him in the past. “I read David’s story, The Night Of The Gun, when it came out and was wildly entertained by his saga. It’s a story of survival filled with pain, crack, journalistic righteousness, abandoned cars, crooks, lies, and then there’s the two little girls who saved his life; it’s overstuffed with humanity,” Odenkirk says. “Shawn Ryan is the man to explore this real anti-hero story. I hope to do justice to David’s intellect and his scrappy nature. It’s gonna be crazy... if we do it right.”
In addition to his ongoing work on Saul, Odenkirk has Girlfriend's Day, which he appears in, wrote and is producing, making its way through post-production now.