David Carr’s acclaimed memoir, The Night of the Gun, is being adapted for the small screen, with Better Call Saul actor Bob Odenkirk attached to star as the New York Times columnist, who died last year at age 58.
The show will air as a six-part miniseries on AMC, according to Deadline.
Like Carr’s 2008 bestseller, the adaptation will trace the journalist’s 20-year battle with cocaine and alcohol addiction, and how the prospect of losing his newborn twins forced him to sober up in a bid to win custody. The book included interviews with people from his past and was written as though he was reporting on his own life.
Carr had written on the media for a quarter of a century, arriving at the Times in 2002 as a business reporter covering the magazine industry. Before that he spent time at The Washington City Paper mentoring journalists including New Yorker columnist Jelani Cobb and The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates.
He’s also known for featuring prominently in Page One, the 2011 documentary about the New York Times’ transition to the internet. Odenkirk, who will also serve as executive producer on the project, said in a statement that he was “wildly entertained” by the book when he first read it.
“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,” he added.
Joining Odenkirk as executive producer is The Shield creator Shawn Ryan, who will also write the series along with Eileen Myers (Big Love).
Odenkirk received a 2015 Emmy nomination for his work on Better Call Saul, which recently concluded its second season on AMC. No premiere date has been set for The Night of the Gun.
