BREAKING BAD Creator Developing Jack and the Beanstalk Movie at Disney

I was very curious to see what Vince Gilligan would do after his wildly successful AMC series Breaking Bad came to an end. Battle Creek, a procedural TV project he developed years before Breaking Bad, landed with somewhat of a thud on CBS, and Better Call Saul just wrapped up its first season on AMC. But the last thing I expected from Gilligan was an entry on Disney's ever-growing list of live-action adaptations of its classic films.

According to Deadline, Disney has bought Beanstalk, a "revisionist" take on the Jack and the Beanstalk story that's based on a detailed outline by Gilligan. The Breaking Bad creator has tasked Emmy-winning BB/Better Call Saul writer Thomas Schnauz with writing the full screenplay based on his outline, and he's eyeing the project as a potential directing gig. It's still early, though, so he may move on to something else; at the very least, Gilligan will produce the film alongside Mark Johnson.

Though Disney made a short based on the tale way back in 1922, the Jack and the Beanstalk story has gotten the big screen treatment twice in the past few years, with Bryan Singer's Jack The Giant Slayer not really connecting with audiences and the revisionist musical Into the Woods also failing to make much of a cultural impact. Will Gilligan's take be different enough to overcome people's apparent disinterest in this story in the modern age? I hope so, because I like the guy a lot and watching him transition back into a film career — he wrote the 2008 superhero film Hancock, remember? — would be very interesting to see.