‘Malcolm in the Middle’ Movie Talks Are Happening, Claims Bryan Cranston

Malcolm in the Middle: The Movie may be making headway — if Bryan Cranston is to be believed.

Months after Malcolm in the Middle creator Linwood Boomer stated that a series reunion was being discussed and the show’s star Frankie Muniz let it slip that Cranston had been working on a feature-length film for the show, Hal Himself has fueled the flames of “Yes, no, maybe”-style speculation by telling E! News  that a reunion movie is currently being discussed. Cranston is playing much more coy than his co-star Muniz, who has already declared, “I would be down 100 percent” to do a Malcolm movie and who accused Cranston of already starting to write the script.

Cranston gave E! News a suggestively vague answer to the big reunion question by saying, “There was some talk about the possibility of doing, like, a reunion movie of Malcolm in the Middle. We had such a great family on that, and I certainly would be open to that if there was a good idea that came up.” Cranston seems to be trying to address the movie that he is allegedly already writing as indirectly as the way Hal changes a lightbulb.

To be fair to Cranston, it’s rarely a prudent decision to get your hopes up and make definitive statements about a film that hasn’t been all but wrapped — movies with full heads of steam die at different stages of the development process every year. However, if Muniz is to be believed, Cranston is seriously underplaying his own involvement in the Malcolm reboot process, and the man who, in Muniz’ words, is “heading writing the script and getting everything rolling,” is playing his cards close to the chest.

In a 2016 Reddit AMA, Cranston answered a fan’s question about a potential reboot by writing, “I don't know if or when that could happen. I guess we have to gauge the temperament of the fans to see if it's something they want.” The recent move to claim that movie talks have taken place while simultaneously pretending as if he didn’t already have an exact idea of how a follow-up film for Malcolm in the Middle would go down may be Cranston cleverly testing the temperament of the show’s fanbase to see if a groundswell of support can sway a studio into greenlighting the project.

Boomer has previously stated that progress on a possible Malcolm in the Middle reunion “would be going much faster if everyone wasn’t so annoying.” Cranston’s answer to the annoying feet-draggers may have been to start saying annoyingly vague comments in the tabloids and drive deprived fans into a frenzy of hype, thus forcing the project into existence through the sheer power of impatience.

Or maybe Cranston is just throwing spaghetti at the talk show wall and seeing what sticks. Nevertheless, we prefer him riling up the rumor mill on more Malcolm content over Cranston telling Conan O’Brien that he lost his virginity to an Austrian sex worker. Lois would be furious.