Categories
Television

Personally, I enjoyed Season 4 and I want more!!

‘Arrested Development’: Mitch Hurwitz wants a movie, then Season 5

Mitch Hurwitz has big plans for “Arrested Development’s” future. He’s long been talking about an “Arrested Development” movie, but the comedy TV show’s creator explained why he’d like to be a film to be the next step in the series’ journey during a speech at the New York TV Festival keynote.

Of course, there’s no set schedule for when that dreamed of movie will be made. Hurwitz gave his usual logline — “All I’ve been able to say is, I really want to continue with this, and the cast really wants to continue with this” — before explaining why he’s having such trouble following up Season 4.

“What my new thing is, because it might be tough to get the cast together for the four months you would need to make a series, is to try to get them together for four weeks sooner, and do the movie that is the story that we’ve been building up to in this show,” Hurwitz explains, via The Hollywood Reporter. “And then, bring the series back after that. It’s not my decision, but it’s what I want to do. The reason I’m not just saying, let’s go do the series next, is because I’m worried it’ll take two years to make all those deals — a mess of people, a weird tease to all of us and the audience. So my goal is to do a movie for Netflix type thing, and then go into the series.”

Of what he learned about making “Arrested Development” Season 4, he admits, “What I came to realize is that some perfect version of ‘Arrested Development’ as it exists for me and the actors and the audience and everybody together probably doesn’t exist.”

There was some backlash to the new form Hurwitz experimented with in Season 4, which largely came because it was impossible for the actors’ schedules to align. But Hurwitz takes full responsibility for, as he explains it, not preparing the audience enough for the change of pace in Season 4.

“I felt in many ways, I did not prepare the audience for this,” he says. “Right before the show came out, I thought, I’ve really not said what this is, and what it had become was a novel. I had this unique opportunity here – people are going to get to watch eight hours of this, they’re not gonna spend the next six months of having it doled out to them … so the storytelling changed. That first episode became much more like chapter one of a novel than episode one of a series. And I didn’t prep you guys — I’m really sorry about that.”

Categories
Games

I still have my Wii U, but I must admit that I rarely Wii Use it.

The End of the Wii and What It Means for Nintendo

Nintendo will no longer manufacture the Wii, and the company may stop selling the system entirely. With the lack of commercial sizzle on the next generation – and backward compatible – Wii U, this could be a business decision that, partnered with a recent price cut, may encourage a further growth in sales. With the Xbox One and PS4 less than a month away, the pressure on Nintendo to increase their hardware lead is immense. The company moved roughly 3.5 million systems in the Wii U’s first year, but only 160,000 in the last quarter.

In comparison, the original Wii absolutely shattered sales figures. Over 67 million Wiis were sold in the system’s lifespan, and unlike the competing Xbox 360 and PS3, the Wii was not a loss-leading venture – each Wii sold returned a healthy profit to Nintendo. But while the hardware was incredibly successful, the Wii’s weak system specs made software success outside of Nintendo’s own IPs (Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong) elusive. While motion controls looked to be the future of gaming – Microsoft and Sony were quick to release their own motion control gimmicks after the Wii penetrated the casual, non-gamer market – the execution on titles that required motion controls often left much to be desired (“I’m waving my hands – why is nothing happening”). A one-trick pony, beyond Wii Sports and a few other must-have titles, the Wii garnered few games worthy of a purchase, and that huge hardware base didn’t mean diddly.

With the anticipation revolving around the PS4 and Xbox One, hardware sales on the Wii U aren’t great. And the formerly reliable franchises may not be up to snuff. If Nintendo can’t unload millions of its own games on a strong user base (a business plan they’ve followed since the GameCube), the company might be in for some serious financial trouble.

With the huge success of the original Wii, you’d think one hardware flop couldn’t spell the end to the most storied video game company ever. But bear in mind – this past hardware generation (the Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360) has been eight years long. The Wii U can’t compete with the PS4 and Xbox One for nearly a decade considering its poor early showing. But if Nintendo comes back in a few years with a brand new system. . . we may be seeing shades of Sega.

In 1994, Sega released the Saturn. In 1998 they released the Dreamcast – both systems had (and continue to have) a die-hard following. Unique games, innovative features. . . the Saturn and Dreamcast were each a bit ahead of their time, but suffered from botched launches and poor 3rd party software support.

Sound familiar?

After the failure of the Dreamcast, Sega took its valuable IPs and software experience to other platforms. Now you can play Sonic on a Nintendo system, something that would seem impossible to a generation of kid who grew up on “Genesis does what Nintendon’t!” So if you think you’ll be long dead before seeing Mario collecting coins for Sony, remember – anything can happen.