Bryan Cranston Reveals A Revival Of His Breakout Role?
Bryan Cranston would return for a Malcolm in the Middle revival if the writers can come up with a "great idea."
These days, it’s impossible to think about Bryan Cranston without thinking about his legendary performance as Walter White in Breaking Bad. However, Cranston likely would never have gotten that role if not for the breakout success of his previous series Malcolm in the Middle. And in an interview with The Independent, he said he’d be happy to reprise that character for a Malcolm in the Middle movie “if it was a great idea.”
Cynics might point out that this is the kind of fluff answer that celebs often give when it comes to whether or not they would ever return to the characters that helped make them famous. However, Bryan Cranston is serious enough about the possibility of doing a reunion movie that he had a conversation about it with Linwood Boomer, the original creator of the show. And Boomer seems to be on the same wavelength as Cranston, as he promised to gather his writers together and see if they could come up with “a great idea, a legitimate idea” that is actually worth pursuing.
In an age of constant remakes and reunions, Bryan Cranston deserves real praise for only wanting to bring the character back if there is a truly solid story to tell. And as he bluntly mentioned in the interview, “I don’t need a job” because “I’ve got plenty of jobs.” Nonetheless, he pointed out that “I’d want it if it was a great idea.”
We’d hate to accuse Bryan Cranston of sassiness, but this part of the interview seems like it might have been pointed toward some of the messier television reunions in recent years. For example, even as Star Trek: Picard unveils its third and final season, fans hope that the showrunners can finally deliver a coherent story rather than phoned-in nostalgia. And the current Night Court series seems almost to be a ghoulish joke: much of the original cast is dead and buried, and by all accounts, they took all the good jokes and storylines for the show with them.
That is unlikely to happen with any Malcolm in the Middle revival because Bryan Cranston and everyone else involved seem committed to creating the best possible film for the characters they love so much. Cranston downright gushed about the show during the interview, saying that “It was seven years of glory” and that he loved having a job that involved “going to work every day and making yourself and others laugh.” And considering he has mentioned the possibility of a reunion film in other interviews, it seems like he is really serious about not just getting this done but getting it right.
Amusingly enough, it seems like Bryan Cranston is ultimately much more protective of the legacy involving his Malcolm in the Middle character than he is of his Breaking Bad character. In a very memorable ad for the Superbowl, both Cranston and Aaron Paul reprised their Breaking Bad characters to shill for PopCorners, complete with a fun meta plot where these characters invent a tasty new chip rather than their signature blue meth. If all it took was a funny 30-second commercial script to get Walter White back onscreen, we’re confident that Linwood Boomer and his writers will get Cranston back to his original breakout character quicker than it takes to blurt “say my name” into your empty bag of chips.
