The LA Times ran an interview with Bryan Cranston last Friday to talk up the latest (and final) season of Breaking Bad. It’s not surprising the Times would ask about a potential movie, what is surprising is Cranston’s answer:
“Vince [Gilligan, show creator] feels that now we have too much story,” Cranston says, “We could actually go beyond those 16 episodes.
It’s not far-fetched,” Cranston says. “I wouldn’t mind visiting that possibility. And this is coming from a guy who doesn’t know anything of how the show’s going to end. If it doesn’t end up in a total apocalypse, who knows? Maybe we could revisit Walter White a year down the road and see where his life has gone. If he’s still alive, that is.”
Bingo. “If he’s still alive.” I don’t want to speculate on the fate of Cranston’s Walter White beyond Bad‘s final sixteen episodes, but one has to wonder how much longer Walt can carry on. The above quote seems like a great way to drum up interest for the show, but I hope Gilligan and team keep the series’s ending finite. The longer we’ve had to marinate on shows like The Sopranos and The Shield, the more apparent it’s become how unnecessary and even distracting movies would be to those narratives. Television as a storytelling medium has really revealed itself in the last decade or so, with shows like Mad Men, Shield, Wire, ect. rivaling (if not surpassing) the quality of most films out today.
If Gilligan honestly has more story to tell, great. But I wouldn’t put much stock into Cranston’s words just yet.