Bob Odenkirk has been cast as David Carr in the in-the-works AMC miniseries adaptation of David Carr’s addiction memoir “Night of the Gun,” the network announced on Monday.
The memoir details Carr’s descent from respected journalist to drug addict, with Carr eventually becoming addicted to crack. But the prospect of losing custody of his kids got him to turn his life around. Carr eventually succumbed to lung cancer and heart disease in Feb. 2015.
Odenkirk and “The Shield” creator Shawn Ryan will executive produce the series from AMC and Sony Pictures Television, along with Marc Provissiero of Odenkirk-Provissiero and Joshua Astrachan of Animal Kingdom, which originated the project. Ryan will also write the series, with Eileen Myers also attached as an executive producer and writer.
“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 said in a statement. “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.”
Odenkirk already stars on AMC “Better Call Saul,” reprising his role as the criminal lawyer Jimmy McGill, a.k.a. Saul Goodman, in a spin-off of Vince Gilligan‘s “Breaking Bad.”
“Shawn Ryan, Bob Odenkirk, and the incredible team behind this have embraced all the things that David would have loved as a storyteller, and crafted a vision for ‘The Night of the Gun’ that we hope will be as timeless as David’s book,” said Joel Stillerman, president of original programming and development for AMC and SundanceTV.