‘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.”