After 20 Years, the MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE Family Hasn’t Changed

Published: March 31, 2026

By Michaela Gordoni

The MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE stars had a blast filming reboot MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE: LIFE’S STILL UNAIR.

“We just keep laughing and laughing,” Bryan Cranston, who played Hal, said.

“I’ve been wanting to do this for years, but it needed to be for a good reason,” he explained. “The story needed to be there — otherwise we’d just be hanging out in someone’s house.”

The reboot happened after Cranston bugged show creator Linwood Boomer for years.

“It started out as nudging,” Boomer said. “Then built into pestering and then finally tipped over into bullying.”

“I was like that water torture test, dripping on [his] forehead,” Cranston quipped. “Eventually, he just wanted the torture to stop.”

Boomer’s wife, Tracy Katsky Boomer, who is an executive producer on the revival, agreed with Cranston.

“She was like, ‘Why don’t you at least give your friend the courtesy of thinking about it seriously?'” Boomer said.

MALCOLM star Frankie Muniz wanted to make a the show a top priority, despite being a busy NASCAR driver.

“I would film Sunday through Wednesday, fly Thursday, race Friday, and fly back Saturday,” Muniz said. “It was exhausting, but I also know how cool it is to have the opportunity to get to do this again, so I wasn’t going to complain at all. I am so thankful to everybody on the production for working around my NASCAR schedule.”

His enjoyed his six weeks of filming in Vancouver.

“It was the first time in my career as an actor that I was happy to have the label ‘actor,'” Muniz said. “When I was a kid, I just showed up and said the words and it all worked out. Now, I’m making a plan going into the scene. Doing the prep makes the process really, really fun.”

All of the original actors will return except for Eril Per Sullivan, who played Dewey.

“When I read the script for MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE, I laughed out loud,” Cranston said. “It was so well-constructed, so well-written that I knew if I could be on that show, I would be proud of it.”

“It didn’t mean that it would be successful, because success in television ratings or box office takes a lot of luck. [But] what I’ve learned from that is, the best thing to do is to follow the well-written word,” he said.

“It’s a whole new set of characters and circumstances that are ripe,” said Jane Kaczmarek, who starred as Lois.

The original show won seven Emmy Awards, a Grammy and a Peabody Award.

Disney’s logline for the new show reads, “Twenty years have gone by since we last saw Malcolm and his family — and after all that time, they’ve learned absolutely nothing.”

The show debuts on Disney+ on April 10.

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