EXCLUSIVE: Mark Johnson is closing in on two decades at AMC. The Oscar-winning film producer behind such movies as Rain Man, The Notebook and The Holdovers started his run at the cable network with Vince Gilligan’s Emmy-winning Breaking Bad. It led to seven other series to date — and more in the works as Johnson has renewed his first-look deal with AMC Studios.
“Why wouldn’t I be at AMC?,” he told Deadline in an interview tied to the new pact. “They truly celebrate the story. You look at the success they’ve had, it is still very much the leader and the benchmark: good writing, good characters and good television.”
Johnson has become a franchise player for AMC. Along with executive producing Breaking Bad and prequel Better Call Saul, he oversees the Anne Rice universe, which spans Interview With the Vampire and Mayfair Witches — both headed into Season 3 after filming Seasons 1 and 2 in New Orleans — and the upcoming The Talamasca. Johnson also is spearheading the recently announced Great American Stories anthology series, which will launch with The Grapes Of Wrath, written by Interview developer/showrunner Rolin Jones.
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In addition to more installments of the current franchises, which he discusses in the Q&A, Johnson is developing other projects under his deal, including drama Black Vault, written by Vinnie Wilhelm (The Bondsman) based on the novella by Alma Katsu and executive produced by The Walking Dead franchise veteran Greg Nicotero.
In it, after an ambitious CIA field agent makes the ill-advised choice to report his encounter with a UFO, he finds himself abandoned by both his family and his allies at the Agency. Fifteen years later, buried behind a desk at Langley, he’s asked to join a task force investigating government knowledge of UFOs. Armed with the tools to unpack the circumstances of his own disgrace and redeem his past, he stumbles onto a mystery that could upend the geopolitical order— and possibly much more.
In the interview with Deadline, Johnson shares plans for expanding the Anne Rice universe and building the Great American Stories franchise and explains why The Grapes Of Wrath was chosen to launch it. He recalls his chance first encounter with Gilligan and reacts to Better Call Saul‘s Emmy record of 53 nominations without a win. He also gives updates on several TV series adaptations of movies he had produced.
As he is about to turn 80 this year, Johnson reveals whether retirement is in his plans and what his hobbies are. He also gives his take on the ongoing industry correction and explains why he thinks series budget getting trimmed may be a good thing.
Building Anne Rice Universe, Potential Crossovers & Spinoffs
DEADLINE: There had been multiple unsuccessful attempts to launch an Anne Rice TV series franchise by the time AMC acquired 18 of her books. Because of that, did you have any hesitation when approached by the network to oversee the properties?
JOHNSON: Well, I had a hesitation because, to be totally candid, I didn’t really know Anne Rice that well. I had read Interview with the Vampire but didn’t know the rest of her works, and I had no idea there was as much as there was.
I went back, looked at the Interview with the Vampire movie, started reading some books and realized the potential and that nobody else was doing what she was doing. That her concept, specifically of vampires, was so original, because there is a temptation to say, yet another vampire show or movie, and yet her vampires — I keep saying they’re vampires, but they’re humans.
Most people forget that vampires are indeed humans, and they have all of the same longings and tastes that we do. And what was so heartbreaking and openly romantic about our vampires is that they are at their core, lonely. The friendships, the love affairs they have with non-vampires have an end date on them so ultimately, these vampires are left alone.
The more I explored her, the more captivated I was. And as I got to know New Orleans, I realized that so much of the city was in her writing and formed by her writing. If you go to New Orleans, they’re all these ghost tours and so on, they’re all based on Anne Rice’s books and characters. It just became a world that I thought there’s so much to do here.
DEADLINE: How ambitious was the initial plan? Was it focused just on Interview with the Vampire or did you have, like Dick Wolf, three on-air series in mind already?
JOHNSON: Oh no, no, no. When we started, we thought maybe it would just be Interview. And the genius of Interview with the Vampire is Rolin Jones, the showrunner-creator, who truly took a very faithful Anne Rice [approach] but he’s also made it entirely his. I think both Seasons 1 and 2 were remarkable, and it’s no accident that both seasons got a 98% Rotten Tomatoes score.
Had that been the only Anne Rice thing I did, I would have been a happy man. Then we started exploring some of the other titles, and we got to Mayfair Witches, which is created by Michelle Ashford and Esta Spaulding. It’s a completely different world; it’s contemporary, and it’s witches, not vampires. And again, it concentrates on human beings, it’s not celebrating the supernatural, but the natural as it’s affected by these other characters.
And then, we’re in the process of finishing The Talamasca, which is a third one altogether. There’s almost a temptation to say, well, they’re not really connected. And yet they are; thematically they are, and certainly in terms of the style and as a concentration, they all belong under the Anne Rice umbrella.
Our goal is — and we’re doing it judiciously — connecting, not so much in terms of easter eggs, but connecting characters from one show to the other, because ultimately, there’s a common point that they all have.
DEADLINE: Are you getting to a point where you can do crossovers between shows? Even if they’re not set in the same era, time is kind of irrelevant when it comes to immortals.
JOHNSON: I know, there is a temptation. When you kill a character, you say, Oh, come on, you can bring him back next season, because it’s the supernatural. No, we can’t play by those rules. And one of the things you learn early on is that there are rules within Anne Rice’s work, and you have to obey them because you deviate at the expense of alienating an audience.
But there’s so many other things we can do. For instance, The Talamasca is an organization that keeps tabs on — and in theory doesn’t interfere with — the supernatural beings in our world. Of course, that would do with witches and with vampires, so you can see how we can connect all three. And we do. There are big surprises already in couple of the seasons, but in the coming season of both Interview and you’ll see in Talamasca that there are some connections to these other franchises.
DEADLINE: What about spinoffs? You did one with Vince Gilligan, Better Call Saul, and AMC has mastered that with The Walking Dead offshoots. Have you thought about characters that have broken out and feel like they can headline their own show?
JOHNSON: No, I haven’t thought about characters that are broken out. This is not a criticism of Walking Dead, but in a strange way, if a character is available to put into another world or his or her own show, then that means you haven’t successfully integrated them into their own franchise. The vampires Lestat and Louie are unique to Interview with a Vampire, and I don’t know how you would break them out of that world and that history. I certainly haven’t thought about, oh, this character is so successful, let’s give her or let’s give him their own show.
DEADLINE: Isn’t there a separate Lestat book in Anne Rice’s collection that you could use for a spinoff?
JOHNSON: Yes, there’s a book called The Vampire Lestat but there is this connection. And, Talamasca, our third series, is not based on a single book. There isn’t a book called The Talamasca, but it’s an organization that appears in a number of Anne Rice’s books.
John Lee Hancock, who is a writer I’ve worked with a great deal, has created the world of The Talamasca, all of it inspired by her work but taken a certain amount of liberty, hopefully at the same time always being faithful to what she might have done with the Talamasca had she done a book on them.
DEADLINE: Is this a direction for you now, not adapt the books title by title but do worlds-encompassing series where you pull from different novels? What else do you have in development?
JOHNSON: We have a couple of other things in different stages of development, two based on specific books, and the third one, like Talamasca, based on series of events that happen in a couple of the books, on characters who can cross over into original stories.
AMC is being smart along with us, taking it step by step. So there isn’t this impulse, quickly, let’s get all the Anne Rice stuff in development. And also it’s hard work. You can’t do a lot of things all at once, so you pinpoint one or two and work on those. Our goal now is to keep both Interview and Mayfair Witches going successfully, and then premiere Talamasca, which I think is a very satisfying show. It’s kind of a spy show, almost a John le Carré with elements of the supernatural in it.
It’s such a gold mine, this cornucopia of material because Anne Rice gifts us characters and situations and moments in history that you want to play with. She’s so specific and so tactile in her world. She’s an extraordinary writer, for one, being a woman writing when she was at that time. And she’s very progressive and quite salty in terms of everything, from romance to sex to violence and, again, she’s writing about the supernatural in a way that nobody else has.
DEADLINE: Did you get to meet her? Was she still alive when you started working on the franchise?
JOHNSON: She was still alive when we started shooting the first season of Interview with the Vampire. She unfortunately died shortly after we started, and we had all of New Orleans — and certainly our shooting company — in a form of mourning. I have met her son, Christopher, who is an executive producer on the shows, but I never met Anne Rice herself.
DEADLINE: How many Anne Rice series do you envision in the universe? Could you go to four or five at the same time?
JOHNSON: I think we could do four or five. At some point, it becomes a little ridiculous, but I have a very small but incredibly gifted team, and we can keep tabs, certainly on the three we have now. I know that we could add a fourth and maybe go a little crazy with a fifth.
DEADLINE: What has been the impact from the shows streaming on Netflix? Have you seen any spike in ratings?
JOHNSON: Well, our show Breaking Bad didn’t become an official hit until it was on Netflix, it made a huge difference. And we’ve already seen that with both Interview and Mayfair Witches, having the first seasons of both those shows be available on Netflix brought a number of new subscribers to the network, which is exactly what AMC had hoped it would do.
‘Breaking Bad’ Universe & ‘Better Call Saul’ Emmy Snub
DEADLINE: You mentioned Breaking Bad. Did you really meet Vince when you were judging a script competition long time ago?
JOHNSON: My undergraduate school was the University of Virginia. After I had been producing movies, I was very involved in the film festival and was asked to be part of a script writing contest that was then headed by Governor Wilder of Virginia. I read a script by this NYU graduate who I think was probably 22 maybe 23 then, Vince Gilligan, who was living in Richmond, Virginia, and it was like a light bulb went off.
Like any greedy producer, I said, I’ve got to know this man. And so I went to Richmond, he and I spent a fair amount of time, I went back and forth to Richmond, where he was living. We did a couple of movies together, and he was offered a job on The X Files. I thought that was a terrible idea, because I thought he’d lose his voice. He is the most inventive writer I’ve ever come across, and I was worried that television was going to somehow beat it out of him. And little did I know…
DEADLINE: He lured you to TV. With Better Call Saul, was that the first time you started thinking of building TV franchises? Obviously you’ve done it on the film side with The Chronicles of Narnia.
JOHNSON: Yes, it was with Better Call Saul, the idea of keeping that world alive. And first of all, Vincent and the writers are geniuses, making sure that, for instance, Saul, while it recognizes and deals with characters and moments from Breaking Bad, the puzzle fits and there are no discrepancies within it. And I thought, what a great idea. So the idea that I’m now involved in the Breaking Bad franchise, the Anne Rice franchise, and now Great American Stories, is certainly not by design.
DEADLINE: In terms of the Breaking Bad franchise, is this it? You did the El Camino movie too, and Vince is currently busy with his secret Apple show. But is there more in the Breaking Bad universe that you guys are noodling on?
JOHNSON: You’ll have to ask Vince, that I don’t know. I know nothing about Vince’s new show. I was with him last week, we continue to be quite close. But there’s certain things that I don’t know about. That’s a question for Vince, I don’t know of any continuation.
DEADLINE: Breaking Bad won 16 Emmys, including 2 for Drama Series. What do you make of Better Call Saul’s Emmy record of zero wins out of 53 nominations?
JOHNSON: I think it was fantastic and humbling for this show that meant so much to all of us to be recognized with so many nominations over the years, and never winning was about as on-brand for Saul Goodman as one could imagine.
‘Great American Story’ Plans
DEADLINE: When you were renewing your AMC deal, did you know that you would be taking on a second franchise for them, beyond Anne Rice?
JOHNSON: No, I knew that we’re in the middle of the Anne Rice one, but this Great American Stories is pretty recent, and it’s a brainchild of [President of Entertainment and AMC Studios] Dan McDermott. He really wants to celebrate what it means to be American and the history of the American generation as seen through its literature and events. I think the ambition is huge, which is what draws me to it.
DEADLINE: Whose idea was it to start with The Grapes of Wrath, yours or Dan’s?
JOHNSON: I think it was Dan and Rolin Jones, who is one of the most gifted storytellers I’ve come across. We talked about it. I had read it, I think, in graduate school, but I quickly came back and re-read it. I have forgotten how extraordinary it is, and I think it’s a perfect story for our time.
When it was first published, it was considered un-American, and a lot of people really wanted to ban it. And the truth of the matter is, while it is a political piece, it is very much a celebration of who we as Americans are, who the characters are, and what this country is all about, even though it’s very much about the Joad family being under the thumb of those in power. I think it’s probably the biggest thing we can start off with.
You look at the John Ford movie with Henry Fonda, which is very, very strong. Arrogantly I say, I think we can actually improve upon it, and I don’t think there’s a better writer than Rolin. So as soon as he brought that up, I think we all said, perfect.
So we’re starting with a bang, and we’ll see what we follow it with. We’re entertaining all kinds of titles. There are nine American Nobel Prize winners in literature, the ninth one is, of course, Bob Dylan. I’m not sure we’re going to be doing a Bob Dylan show, but the palette is gigantic.
DEADLINE: What is the current status of The Grapes of Wrath? How far along is it?
JOHNSON: It has not been written yet. Rolin is otherwise engaged with the third season of Interview.
DEADLINE: But you’re already thinking about other titles, yes?
JOHNSON: Oh yes, we have sort of a master list, and as soon as it was announced, a number of really significant writers reached out and said, How about this? What about that? Have you thought about this? It’s difficult because I don’t know that you can follow it with a heavy period piece. Do you try something a little bit lighter in tone? Do you try something geographically different? Anyhow, the options are huge, and I think we’ll be developing two or three titles at the same time in competition for the second [installment].
DEADLINE: Dare I say that the infamous AMC bake-off is back?
JOHNSON: I don’t. By the way, I think I may have escaped that, and there are a number of people I know who will damn AMC because of that bake-off process. It was, to their credit, discontinued, but it was a pretty tough way to do it.
Look, I’ve been at AMC since the start of my television career. I did a couple of things at CBS years ago, but not just with Breaking Bad, but Halt and Catch Fire and Rectify, two shows I’m extraordinarily proud of. I’ve been there long enough that practically the whole management has changed. The consistent player is Ben Davis, who started as a development executive when we were doing Breaking Bad and now runs production. I could not be more pleased and quite frankly, thankful, that I’m at AMC.
DEADLINE: Is it possible for you to go contemporary with Great American Stories or will you be sticking to classics?
JOHNSON: Sure. I was talking about something at some point– and I have no idea what the rights situation is — could we do something like A Confederacy of Dunces? I’m a huge Walker Percy fan. There are some really good, not just 20th century, but end of 20th century writers, some extraordinary people, be it [John] Cheever. It’s just this great opportunity, you have all these titles.
‘Black Vault’ & Adapting ‘Galaxy Quest’, ‘The Holdovers’ & ‘What Lies Beneath’ For TV
DEADLINE: Under your AMC deal, are you working on anything that is a brand new IP or just something different than Anne Rice and Great American Stories?
JOHNSON: We’re definitely developing other things, we have some writers. Look, for a producer, writers are his or her lifeblood, some of my best friends are writers. People come to me all the time, or I’ll go to them with an idea, writers I value. So we have a couple of things in development at AMC that have nothing to do with franchises.
DEADLINE: Anything you can mention?
JOHNSON: There’s something called Black Vault that I’m doing with a wonderful writer named Vinnie Wilhelm. For me as a producer, it’s a non-exclusive deal, it’s a first-look deal. So I have a couple of things .We’re developing our movie, Galaxy Quest, as a TV series. But the bulk of my work is clearly with AMC. And not because I have a deal there; it would be my first stop no matter what.
DEADLINE: What is the status of the long-gestating Galaxy Quest series at Paramount+? And I believe you also have been developing a TV series based on The Holdovers.
JOHNSON: Both are being written, so we’ll see.
DEADLINE: Any other movie titles from your body of work that you are looking at or have been approached about doing for TV? One day The Notebook will probably lend itself to a limited series somewhere.
JOHNSON: Yeah, there was, of course, the Broadway play. We’re talking. We’re very excited about the idea of maybe doing a television show — I’m not sure I should say this but I’m going to — our movie What Lies Beneath, that could lend itself to a very good, perhaps limited, perhaps not, TV show.
DEADLINE: Is there any of your movie titles that you could do for AMC or are they all tied up at different studios?
JOHNSON: Most of them are. There’s something that I’m talking to AMC this week about, but I can’t tell you.
Cameos, Retirement & Contracting TV Budgets
DEADLINE: Have you done cameos on your shows? Do you have interest in doing that?
JOHNSON: No, I have no interest at all. I had a small part in Good Morning, Vietnam. I had a small part in The Notebook, a small part in a couple of others. I hate it, it drives me crazy. I grew up in Spain, of all places, and at the time, they were making American and British films there. I started working as an extra, and then I had a couple of small parts. But no, that’s not an ambition of mine, and not something I enjoy doing.
DEADLINE: Your career has spanned more than four decades on two continents across film and TV. Are you thinking about slowing down at any point, enjoy golf and retirement? How long are you planning to go on full speed?
JOHNSON: You know what, Nellie, I enjoy it so much I don’t know why I would step down. And I don’t play golf. I’m probably the most boring person I know, because my hobby is movies and television. I go to cinemas two or three times a week. I went downtown to Alamo Drafthouse to see Serpico. And a couple of days before I was watching The Conversation at the Egyptian.
I got a graduate degree in film scholarship, history, theory and criticism — not film production — and I was going to teach it before I got involved. You can’t talk to me about much outside of the film and television worlds because I I’m too busy paying attention to all of that world. I really love doing what I’m doing, as long as I feel that I’m doing it well and am somewhat relevant, I’m going to keep doing it.
DEADLINE: What is next for you on the film side?
JOHNSON: I’m working with a director who you would know, putting together something that we’re going to start shooting by the end of the year.
DEADLINE: AMC and the entire industry have changed a lot since Breaking Bad. What is your take on where television is going? Are you optimistic about the future of TV storytelling and TV producers? There is concern that they may become extinct due to the new compensation models.
JOHNSON: Yeah, the producers’ plight is a tough one right now, and there are a number of us, a number or organizations, including Producers United, trying to defend, not just the producers themselves, but what a producer does. It seems to be undervalued these days and is taken up sometimes by people who aren’t producers, and I think the process and often the product suffers from it.
I’m not going to say anything original, it’s an evolving world. I was lucky in that I was a feature film producer who really, thanks to Breaking Bad, adapted and accepted the television world. You’re using different muscles, and it’s so satisfying. I’m so lucky because I can do a feature now and then, and these television shows, which I truly enjoy doing. The challenges are different, and they keep me on my toes.
I think what we’re going through right now, everybody’s complaining about budgets, but it’s just a redirection. I think it’s setting the scales back to zero because we were spending, quite frankly, way too much on so many shows.
At AMC, we don’t have the same budgets some of the streamers have, but it actually forces you to be more imaginative, more resourceful. So I would point at both seasons of Interview With the Vampire and dare anybody to say those aren’t really spectacularly made pieces of filmmaking.
And we made them on a level that I think, once again, I don’t think we’re misspending any money, and I don’t think anything needed to be as expensive as it has been in the past. Obviously, if you’re doing Shōgun, there’s a certain amount of money that you have to spend, but I do think everything’s got way out of whack, and I don’t bemoan the fact that it’s correcting itself now.
DEADLINE: So being a producer is still a viable profession in the post-peak TV landscape?
JOHNSON: Yes, and in part, I don’t even know how to talk about it financially. I can just say it’s a viable profession because it’s immensely satisfying. There’s so many great creators, so many feature directors, so many great showrunners, and I want to help them make whatever it is they want to make within the parameters that were given. Some days are tougher than others, but I love what I’m doing,