“Breaking Bad” is often cited as one of the greatest television shows of all time, and for good reasons. For five seasons, fans watched the gripping tale of Walter White – a man struggling with identity and often his own mortality – as well as the cast of characters around him.

The show ended in 2013 and a sequel film starring Aaron Paul was released in 2019, but lead actor Bryan Cranston says the show was better off staying on television from the beginning.

Cranston noted that in his early career, film actors and television actors were often segregated within the industry, and that going back and forth between each medium was discouraged, if not outright prohibited.

He credited the emergence of prestige television with giving artists and storytellers a new medium through which to tell stories. In Cranston’s view, the story should match the medium that audiences view it through.

“If you can tell a story in an hour and a half to two hours, it should be a movie,” Cranston said, speaking at an event for the new Apple TV+ series “The Studio.”

“But, for instance, ‘Breaking Bad’ would have made a terrible movie because you would have had to truncate all the beats of his changing, his transitioning from a good guy to a bad guy, and it would have been a terrible movie. So it needed that kind of format.

‘Breaking Bad’ revitalized Cranston’s career and helped stars like Aaron Paul, Krysten Ritter and Giancarlo Esposito break out into more prestigious roles. The show won 16 Emmy awards, with Cranston taking home the best lead actor award four times.

The show’s success launched an equally well-regarded prequel spin-off, “Better Call Saul.” The show saw Esposito, Jonathan Banks and Bob Odenkirk reprise their roles from the original show, and Cranston and Paul appeared in certain episodes.

Odenkirk was nominated for best lead actor six times, and has gone on to star in feature films and other critically acclaimed television shows like “Fargo” and “The Bear.”

We’ll see what the future holds for the cast of one of the greatest shows of all time – a show that the lead actor believes would have produced an awful movie.

Bryan Cranston Admits ‘Breaking Bad’ Movie Wouldn’t Work first appeared on Men’s Journal on May 22, 2025