Cranston, who reprised White on the Breaking Bad prequel Better Call Saul a few months back, will play his most well-known character again in a commercial for Popcorners in Super Bowl LVII. Cranston confirmed this when he tweeted a picture of himself as White while holding a bag of Popcorners in the presumably New Mexico desert.
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In the tweet, Cranston provided the caption, “Breaking soon. 02.12.23 #PopCorners_Partner.” There have been no details regarding what White will do in the commercial besides promoting the Popcorners brand. There could very well be other actors from the show who are in the commercial, and doing so could be beneficial for Popcorners, knowing Breaking Bad’s strong popularity even to this day.
This is not the first time a company has referenced a TV drama commonly regarded as one of the greatest shows ever to promote its brand. Last year, Chevy had Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who played Meadow Soprano on the HBO all-time show The Sopranos, drive one of their cars to remake the show’s iconic intro in which the passed-on James Gandolfini would drive from New York to New Jersey as the song “Woke Up This Morning” by Alabama 3 plays in the background. Not only that, but Robert Iler, who played Meadow’s brother AJ Soprano, also made an appearance to meet up with Sigler at the end of the commercial. They did this to more or less modernize their cars with a classic intro that TV watchers remember.
Much like The Sopranos, enough time has passed since Breaking Bad first aired that it could be considered old enough to be a classic, having started in 2008, and it has been almost 10 years since the show aired its final episode. White’s descent into a sociopathic drug kingpin set the stage for the television antiheroes that followed him, like Bojack Horseman, Saul Goodman, and Bill Hader’s Barry Berkman. More than that, White slowly embracing his Heisenberg persona bit by bit is what made him the iconic character he is today.
It’s hard to see how this upcoming commercial won’t be anything more than a comedy, given that it’s promoting a snack instead of an automobile. Luckily, they have an actor who is more than experienced in comedy, given that Cranston was known best for playing Hal in the sitcom Malcolm in the Middle before he played White in Breaking Bad. Hopefully, the commercial won’t negatively affect Breaking Bad’s legacy for the sake of a joke. Better Call Saul was more lighthearted than Breaking Bad, yet it’s considered on par with its predecessor.
Breaking Bad can currently be streamed on Netflix.
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Source: Bryan Cranston/Twitter
