Former “Breaking Bad” alum Bryan Cranston has revealed that the 2017 dramedy “The Upside,” in which he stars alongside Kevin Hart, is getting a sequel.
A remake of the Omar Sy-led 2011 French feature “The Intouchables,” the true story-inspired tale follows a paralyzed billionaire who befriends a recently paroled convict and hires him as a caretaker.
Appearing on Monday’s upcoming episode of Bill Maher’s Club Random podcast (via Variety), Cranston revealed that the story isn’t over as they are planning a follow-up: “We’re doing a sequel to it.”
Boasting a $37 million budget, the original grossed $125 million at the box office and was comedian Hart’s first significant dramatic role. Cranston says he got blowback over playing a quadriplegic actor in the film:
“I got a lot of s— for that. I am an able-bodied actor playing a disabled actor… I was pretty surprised that I got some blowback to it, and I thought, ‘There’s a good point, that disabled actors are not given an opportunity.’ It’s a kind of a catch-22 that… it’s like, ‘Do you have the cache to be able to carry a film?'”.
He goes on to cite Al Pacino and Daniel Day-Lewis as actors who played characters with disabilities who delivered acclaimed work in films like “Scent of a Woman” and “My Left Foot” and says “we would have missed some great performances”.
But he then says he understands the complaints: “You can only have the perspective of a 66-year-old white male… you can understand but you cannot really know what it feels like to live in that skin.”
Source: Variety
