Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston Shoots Down Potential Revival

Bryan Cranston isn’t Breaking Bad again anytime soon. The six-time Emmy-winning Walter White actor played the high school chemistry teacher-turned-meth kingpin in five seasons of Breaking Bad between 2008 and 2013, and recently reprised the role in the sixth and final season of spin-off/prequel Better Call Saul. (Cranston also reunited with co-star Aaron Paul, who portrayed his meth-making protege Jesse Pinkman, for a viral Super Bowl commercial earlier this year.) While there could be an unscripted reunion, Cranston says there won’t be a Breaking Bad revival. 

“They wanted to do a Breaking Bad 15-year reunion,” Cranston told British GQ. “And I thought, ‘In a quick five years from now we’re going to do the 20 and then the 25, then the…’ It’s like, let’s not try to do too much.” Of course, it helps that — spoiler alert — White died in the Breaking Bad series finale, with Cranston’s appearances in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie and Better Call Saul taking place before Walt’s death.

The 67-year-old actor also announced his intention to temporarily retire at age 70 in 2026. According to British GQ, Cranston will shutter his production company Moonshot Entertainment, sell his half of Dos Hombres, the mezcal company he co-owns with Paul, and abscond with his wife, Robin Dearden, to a foreign country. 

“I want to change the paradigm once again,” he told the outlet. “For the last 24 years, Robin has led her life holding onto my tail. She’s been the plus one, she’s been the wife of a celebrity. She’s had to pivot and adjust her life based on mine. She has tremendous benefit from it, but we’re uneven. I want to level that out. She deserves it.”

He added of relocating to a small village somewhere overseas: “I want to have that experience. I want to go for day trips and have the fire in the fireplace and drink wine with new friends and not read scripts. It’s not going to be like, ‘Oh, I’ll read and see what I’m going to do.’ No, it’s a pause. It’s a stop. I won’t be thinking about [work]. I’m not going to be taking phone calls.”

Last year, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan confirmed the Saul series finale would be the end of the BBU — the Breaking Bad Universe — that includes the Jesse wrap-up movie El Camino. But Dan McDermott, president of entertainment and AMC Studios at AMC Networks, which aired the Sony Pictures TV series, said last year: “The door is always open and I long for the day my phone rings and Vince,Peter [Gould, Saul co-creator] or our friends at Sony call to say, ‘Hey, I think we have anothershow set in this universe.’”