This is awesome news to me on a personal level, mostly because I STILL find reruns of Malcolm in the Middle to be utterly hilarious.

But Bryan Cranston–beleaguered patriarch Hal from the show mentioned above, and also of several other pieces including Breaking Bad–will be expanding outward from television into movies, and his newest target will be John Carter of Mars.

He’s looking to play a Civil War soldier in this one, and he’ll be joined by Willem Dafoe as an alien, and Mark Strong as a shape shifter.  What’s more, this is also the live action direction debut of Pixar‘s own Andrew Stanton.

Now I don’t know about you, but that’s just brutally cool.

Think about that for a minute!  Willem Dafoe!  Bryan Cranston!  Directed by PIXAR’S own ANDREW STANTON!  Admittedly, the whole is never exactly equivalent to the sum of its parts, but man, if this doesn’t turn out much worse than the sum of its parts, it should still be pretty good.