When it comes to choosing acting gigs, Emmy and Golden Globe winner Bryan Cranston — best known as "Breaking Bad's" "meth-od" man and chemistry teacher-turned crystal meth kingpin "Heisenberg" — calls the shots.

So how did Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures get the now-Tony Award nominated actor on board to join the cast of "Godzilla"?

Bring in self-proclaimed "geek" and passionate producer Thomas Tull, CEO of Legendary, along with "Monsters" director Gareth Edwards, to sell the story.

At a roundtable discussion after the New York City screening of "Godzilla," Tull admitted that "Breaking Bad's" TV icon, Cranston, was initially "pretty skeptical" to sign onto the film, but once he sat down with him and Edwards, he was hooked.

"You can't threaten Heisenberg," Tull joked.

But Godzilla resonated with Cranston during his youth.

"Godzilla with his fiery breath, he just destroyed everything in his wake," Cranston said in an earlier interview. "It was actually a man in a suit stomping through a miniature Tokyo, but it was marvelous to a young kid. There's a part of me that will always be that boy, but the whole sensibility of how to make a movie like this matured - the audience has evolved. It's not just about Godzilla smashing things up. People are still going to root for him, but you also want to be connected to what's happening and root for the characters to make it through."

While Cranston fans might be a bit bummed that he's short on screentime in the film, he gives a great performance. And if it helps ease the Cranston blow, actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson ("Kick-Ass"), who plays his son, ends up carrying the torch — and he's not sore on the eyes!

Taylor-Johnson said he was moved by the performances of Juliette Binochet and Cranston, who play his parents in the film. He admitted that it was "super-emotional" and almost brought him to tears.

"Bryan brought a lot to his role," Taylor-Johnson said.

"He was just phenomenal," Tull added.

Tull, who is fond of superheroes, comic books, toys and gadgets, was thrilled that all of the actors he and Edwards wanted were also on board with "Godzilla."

"This is the first time in over a decade that every single first choice actor said yes," he explained.

Edwards, whom Tull calls an "old fashioned filmmaker," is also very passionate about these type of films. His "Monsters" was a wildly successful but low-budget film. In contrast, the hefty price tag of "Godzilla" allowed him to spread his cinematic wings. "It's an overwhelming attack on the senses," Edwards said.

According to Tull, the idea of another "Godzilla" movie received a great deal of skepticism from Hollywood, although they produced and financed it themselves. "From Hollywood certainly, people would say to me, ‘I am not sure anybody cares anymore, how do you make this relevant today?'"

"The truth is at Legendary we make movies that we want to see. It's obviously a completely different thing, but our first movie was ‘Batman Begins' and there were a lot of things about 'Batman' back then. There was this guy named Christopher Nolan — it seemed to work out OK with him at the helm. I think it's just about the execution and you want to make sure from the very first teaser that the fans knew that we were also fans."

While "Godzilla" was in production, Tull was also simultaneously working with Mexican film director Guillermo del Toro ("Pan's Labryth" and "Hellboy") on "Pacific Rim," a sci-fi monster movie.

While he says the two films are "tonally different for a hundred different reasons," they were both given the effort and dedication they deserved.

So if "Godzilla" is a success at the box office, will there be a sequel in the future?

"You don't use the ‘s' word until the movie comes out," Tull pointed out. "That is an iron-clad rule because the movie gods will get very offended."

Check out the official trailer of "Godzilla," which hits theaters Friday, May 16.