Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz says he is “definitely” going to do more of the show.
After seven years off the air, the cult series made a splashy return two months ago when its fourth season arrived on Netflix. And that doesn’t seem to be the end of the road for the stair car.
“Are we going to do more?” Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos asked Hurwitz at Montreal’s Just for Laughs comedy conference Thursday afternoon. The answer was positive in the absolute.
There don’t seem to be any deals in place as yet and Hurwitz maintains that he wants to make a movie version of the show.
It took a year to cut through the red tape to make season 4 happen, since 20th Century Fox actually owns Arrested Development. But while you shouldn’t hold your breath waiting for an official announcement of the movie or a fifth season, Hurwitz claimed he’s ready. “We have the movie, basically. We have the next step,” he noted with regards the proposed film’s plot. Sarandos said he’d be happy to keep the show going.
Hurwitz also said he wanted the cast all together next time as opposed having to work around their other commitments. That in part led to the different structure of season 4, in which each episode focused on a single character with occasional appearances from the other cast members.
The hour-long conversation between Hurwitz and Sarandos threw up a few other interesting tidbits about the show’s rebirth.
Sarandos, for instance, pointed out the Arrested Development revival emerged from a chance meeting with producer Ron Howard at a party. Hurwitz, meanwhile, was initially taken aback by Netflix’s decision to release all episodes simultaneously “Even I was saying, ‘What? You’re going to air them all at once?’” he joked. That, of course, led to dedicated fans binging on the show and burning through all 15 episodes in a day.
One of the season’s plot threads revolved around Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) driving what was obviously a Google Street View car, part of a running joke about the show’s lead character driving ridiculous vehicles. Once Hurwitz had shot Bateman’s scenes with the car, Google wouldn’t allow Netflix to show its branding, leading to the logos on the car being blurred. Hurwitz noted the irony of the Street View car capturing his house and car in real life, but Google wouldn’t allow the car to be shown. That’s privacy for you.
On the Netflix side of the discussion, Sarandos said the company is taking its time to find the really great projects to adopt for original content on the streaming service. He added that there was a massive swell of anticipation before Netflix debuted its first original series, House of Cards earlier this year. There were more than 2 billion “impressions” (tweets, blog posts, and so on) about the series before Netflix started airing it.
Hurwitz admitted that no one “expected the press would be as into as they were.” Netflix bringing back the show was largely a consequence of its cult standing and popularity on the service.
Those same fans who helped bring it back will be glad to know the door’s wide open for the series to continue.
Screenshot via Darren Abate/YouTube
