Many of us here at SOS are absolute bananas about one of AMC’s outstanding drama series, not the 50s era one with all the smoking men, but rather Breaking Bad. Unfortunately, after five years and numerous awards (with more sure to come) including three consecutive Emmy wins for lead actor Bryan Cranston, AMC officially announced on Sunday its decision to renew the series for a fifth and final season of 16 episodes.
This may not come as a shock to those in the industry as protracted negotiations have been ongoing in the past several weeks with the network AMC and its producing partner Sony Pictures TV for a renewal. Talks became strained over this time and news leaked that Sony was reportedly shopping the show to other networks (much like the FX to DirecTV deal for Damages) while AMC was even considering reducing a season’s episode order from a usual 13 to “six to eight”. Deadline reports that the conclusion of the negotiations may have come so swiftly now is because of a license deal deadline with AMC that would have expired today and actors’ options done as of August 31.
Creator Vince Gilligan had this to say about his series concluding in an official statement from AMC, “It’s a funny irony — I’d hate to know the date of my own last day on earth, but I’m delighted to know what Walter White’s will be (episodically speaking). This is a great gift to me and to my wonderful writers. It’s knowledge which will allow us to properly build our story to a satisfying conclusion. Now, if we don’t manage to pull that off, we’ve got no one to blame but ourselves.” Nonetheless it isn’t quite time to say goodbye to Walter White, as audiences have the rest of Season 4 to enjoy every Sunday and an extended final season to look forward to in 2012 (presumably as no scheduling decisions have been made as of yet). For more from AMC’s official press release and what AMC president Charlie Collier had to say about the decision, click over to Deadline.