TURNED DOWN: A 'crazy idea' to continue the Breaking Bad series came from DreamWorks.

The creators of Breaking Bad turned down an offer of US$75 million (NZ$90 million) to make three more episodes of the show.

DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg has revealed he made the lucrative offer to extend the series, but was unsuccessful.

"I had this crazy idea. I was nuts for the show. I had no idea where this season was going," Katzenberg said during a speech at the MIPCOM conference in Cannes, which was reported by Variety magazine and other US publications.

"The last series cost about $3.5 million an episode. So they would make more profit from these three shows than they made from five years of the entire series," he said.

Katzenberg, renowned as one of Hollywood's most successful executives, wasn't just trying to achieve "diehard fan" status. He had a serious business intent behind the offer - proving the lucrative nature of fresh television content being screened online.

The plan was for DreamWorks to show the further three Breaking Bad episodes on a pay-per-view online channel, with the idea of charging between 50 cents and 99 cents per six-minute instalment.

Katzenberg said he pitched the idea to a group of executives, including the show's creator Vince Gilligan, but had no success.

"I said (to them), 'I'm going to create the greatest pay-per-view television event for scripted programming anybody's ever done'," he said of the pitch, which occurred six weeks ago.

Katzenberg said despite the idea being rejected, he wanted conference attendees to know how serious he was about bidding for original online television content.

"I share the story with you only to tell you that I have the courage of my convictions in this. I just think that there is a whole new platform for (short form) entertainment ... and the higher the quality of the stuff that fills it, the higher people will be paid for the work that they are doing there," Katzenberg said.

He was part of a $33 million deal for DreamWorks, which bought YouTube entertainment network AwesomenessTV earlier this year.