Monday brings great news for anyone who is passionate about journalism—and/or Bob Odenkirk. AMC just announced that it’s developing a six-part mini-series adaptation of David Carr’s best-selling memoir, The Night of the Gun. Odenkirk is attached to play the legendary New York Times journalist who died just last year.
The project is exciting for a number of reasons—not least of which is the potential for Odenkirk to finally win an acting Emmy. True, the comedian turned dramatic actor did win a pair of statuettes for writing in 1989 and 1993, awards he shared with the staffs of Saturday Night Live and The Ben Stiller Show, respectively. But he’s never been rewarded for his on-camera work in celebrated series like Fargo and Breaking Bad. He was most recently nominated for Better Call Saul in 2015, but lost the award to Jon Hamm’s Don Draper as Mad Men bowed for its final season.
The Night of the Gun, published in 2008, found Carr applying his tireless zeal for reporting to the darker parts of his own life—when he was an alcoholic and addicted to cocaine. The New York Times called the book “brave, heartfelt, often funny, often frustrating.” Has any description ever sounded more ripe for an AMC adaptation?
AMC already pulled off one mini-series this year, its espionage thriller The Night Manager, starring Hugh Laurie and Tom Hiddleston. Writers Shawn Ryan (The Shield, Mad Dogs, Terriers) and Eileen Myers (Masters of Sex, Mad Dogs, Hung) will surely be aiming even higher as they executive produce The Night of the Gun alongside Odenkirk and a few others, assuming the show gets picked up to series.