Award-winning writer, director and producer Vince Gilligan, best known as the force behind “Breaking Bad” and its spinoff prequel “Better Call Saul,” will receive the Writers Guild of America’s Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television Writing Achievement, the guild announced Tuesday.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” Gilligan said in a statement released by the WGA. “Cribbing from a better writer is about all I can think to do right now, preoccupied as we all are by what has happened to beautiful Southern California. But this award is a true honor, and I appreciate it deeply.”
The Chayefsky award honors a writer who has “advanced the literature of television and made outstanding contributions to the profession of the television writer.”
Gilligan first gained attention for penning a screenplay titled “Home Fries,” which became a film starring Drew Barrymore and Luke Wilson. He later joined the writing staff and became an executive producer of “The X-Files” and helped create its spinoff series “The Lone Gunmen.”
He created “Breaking Bad” in 2008, with the series becoming one of television’s most honored productions.
Gilligan will receive the award during the WGA Awards ceremony on Feb. 15.
Previous recipients of the Chayefsky award include Linda Bloodworth Thomason, Yvette Lee Bowser, Merrill Markoe, Jenji Kohan, Diane English, Aaron Sorkin, Steven Bochco, Susan Harris, Stephen J. Cannell, Shonda Rhimes, David Chase, Marta Kauffman & David Crane, Larry David, Garry Marshall, and Alison Cross.