'Breaking Bad's' Bryan Cranston joins 'Total Recall' remake

Bryan Cranston

Credit: AP Photo

"Breaking Bad" topliner Bryan Cranston will star as the main baddie in Columbia's upcoming "Total Recall" remake, the actor confirmed to HitFix.

He will be joining Colin Farrell in the sci-fi action film, directed by Len Wiseman (the "Underwold" series, "Live Free or Die Hard"), which is based on the Philip K. Dick short story "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale."

That story also inspired the 1990 box office hit "Total Recall," starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone, and directed by Paul Verhoeven ("RoboCop," "Basic Instinct"). That film dealt with a man (Schwarzenegger) who buys memory implants, only to start suspecting that his dreams are actually his past reality, leading him to save the oppressed colonists living on Mars from an evil corporate overlord (Ronny Cox).

Neal Moritz's Original Films is producing the remake.

Multiple Emmy-winner Cranston can currently be seen on the big screen in "The Lincoln Lawyer," starring Matthew McConaughey. Cranston will also appear in the upcoming Tom Hanks-directed "Larry Crowne," with Julia Roberts.

Farrell was recently seen in "The Way Back" and will appear in the upcoming "Horrible Bosses." He co-starred in another Philip K. Dick adaptation, "Minority Report," in 2002.