Giancarlo Esposito, Moff Gideon in The Mandalorian, has spoken to Deadline.com about adapting his graphic novel The Venetian, how he would like to make some film moves, and how he’s not done playing a bad guy.
Giancarlo Esposito has dished on plans for a Stephen King project he’s working up with Guy Busick, and an adaptation of his graphic novel ‘The Venetian’, which hits shelves soon. The Breaking Bad star was on good form as he paid a visit to Deadline’s Red Sea International Film Festival studio.
Esposito is getting several of his own projects up and running. He is about to release a graphic novel, ‘The Venetian’, which was co-created by screenwriter Matt Wheeler and writer and storyboard artist Jay Martin. A plan is already in place to adapt that for the screen. “I’ve been working on ‘The Venetian’ as a graphic novel to then turn into a film,” Esposito said. “I wanted to explore my Italian and African American heritage, and I wanted to explore an expatriate from America going back to Italy. We have a script already written … we’ll raise funds to shoot it in Venice.”
There is also a project inspired by Stephen King’s 2024 novella ‘The Dreamers’. “I want to jump into the horror genre,” Esposito said, noting he is close to finalizing a deal that will move this one forward. If the agreement gets over the line, Esposito will be working with screenwriter Guy Busick to make ‘The Dreamers’ a reality: “Guy Busick, who wrote Abigail, and who I’ve been collaborating with, will write the script.”
Esposito said he had wanted to make some film moves after a run of starring in series including The Boys, The Gentleman, Better Call Saul and The Mandalorian. “I fancy myself an actor who loves to move throughout different areas of my creative journey, and so film, to me, is very important.” Suffice to say, his next projects are features. There is Elegance Bratton crime thriller By Any Means, John Turturro’s The Only Living Pickpocket in New York and Bassam Tariq’s Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother.
Actor and producer Esposito is, meanwhile, responsible for some classic on-screen bad guys, most famously Gus Fring in Breaking Bad. “I’m not typecast,” Esposito said. “I can make a choice to do what I do. I think I’m still eradicating the bad guy within me. There’s darkness and light in all of us, and I think from the traumatic childhood that I grew up in, I’ve had to spend time letting go of that angry Black man who wasn’t accepted in America for being part Italian and part Black. I’m not done with being a bad guy.”
