Now, the story of a wealthy family who lost everything…including the chance to have their own movie. There had been rumblings of a potential Arrested Development movie here and there, but we never got it, instead the series burning out in a fourth and fifth season that never quite matched what the first three did. But what would an Arrested Development movie have looked like?
Jason Bateman recently appeared as a guest on Hot Ones, where host Sean Evans brought up the scrapped Arrested Development. And Bateman was game to talk about it – as he tried choking down a wing hit with the Funken Hot sauce, which registers a 670,000 on the Scoville scale. “I feel it was kind of close…The other casting…would have been Dr. Phil for George Sr., right, for Jeffrey Tambor. Will Ferrell, I think, was talking to [Will] Arnett about playing Gob. Jonah Hill was maybe gonna do Michael Cera’s part ‘cause I think maybe they were hanging out from Superbad. But it was cruisin’…‘cause, you know, it was gonna be the movie inside the movie. They were going to be on set and we [the Bluths] would show up on set and watch. Like, Michael Bluth’s excited that Matt Damon’s playing me, you know. I’d probably, like, give him too many notes. But I think that would have been fun, that would have been good.” Interestingly, it was Matt Damon himself who approached Jason Bateman over playing Michael Bluth.
An Arrested Development movie was teased (in appropriate meta form) as far back as 2006 in the season three finale, with Ron Howard – who of course did the narration for Arrested Development, later playing himself – telling Maeby that he saw her family’s story working better as a film rather than a TV series. The series would return in 2013 for season four, while the fifth season concluded in 2019.
What do you think? When would have been the ideal time to get an Arrested Development movie greenlit? Would it be a “huge mistake” to try it now? Head over to the banana stand and let us know!
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