Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston is in final talks to join the Warner Bros.-Village Roadshow period police saga The Gangster Squad, starring opposite Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Michael Peña and Anthony Mackie.

Ruben Fleischer is helming from a script by former Los Angeles Police Dept. officer Will Beall.

Bryan Cranston will portray Max Kennard, a laconic LAPD officer from Texas who enforces the law ambitiously.

The Gangster Squad is a chronicle of the LAPD's fight to keep East Coast Mafia types out of Los Angeles in the 1940s and 50s.

No production date has been set.