¡Anyong! It’s time for some Arrested Development news, because any Thursday needs to be brightened up by the Bluth family. I did my best to compile the following tidbits from different sources (below) from a cast and crew Q&A that took place on January 9, 2013 at the Television Critics’ Winter Press Tour.
The 14 new episodes will be on Netflix beginning in May.
- In honor of the announcement, Netflix has added a bunch of new titles to it’s Watch Instantly section, including Girls with Low Self Esteem: Newport Beach, Les Cousins Dangereux, Scandalmakers, Ready, Aim…Marry Me!, Mock Trail with J. Reinhold, Wrench, and Boyfights. The links go to the AD page, but there’s real artwork and descriptions of each one. Too funny. There are ten fake movies/TV shows in all.
- Creator Mitch Hurwitz revealed that the new episodes are set up to tell stories from each character’s perspective and we’ll see some scenes more than once, from different points of view, explaining, “We’re telling a complicated story that jumps around in time and has all these intersections. It’s kind of an evolution of the storytelling that was necessary,” Hurwitz said. He also referred to the show as “loosely an anthology.”
- Jason Bateman teased a movie! He told fans not to call this “Season 4” but rather look at it as an “act one” that will lead to a movie, with certain episodes that set the possible feature film up. Even if the movie doesn’t happen, he assured fans that they won’t be left hanging with no conclusion: “It is certainly a satisfying conclusion to these episodes if for some reason a movie doesn’t happen, but they are all meant to work within one another as a hybrid package of Arrested Development stuff.”
- Hurwitz and the writers found themselves having to nix some good ideas for plot lines because they had already been done in fan fiction! Michael Cera actually also worked as a writer for the new episodes and according to Hurwitz had “some wild ideas that didn’t make it.”
- Despite no longer needing them to obey network broadcasting rules, the show will still keep its trademark, strategically placed beeps.
- [Not Really] Spoiler: A deleted scene featuring Lucille and Buster was shown at the end of the Q&A. In the clip, Lucille, who is now under house arrest herself, is shown smoking a cigarette. Unable to go outside to exhale, she blows the smoke into Buster’s mouth, who then has to run to the patio to release the smoke outdoors. The process repeats itself several times, taking its toll on Buster. Jessica Walter described the new season as “different than the original Arrested Development and beyond anything I could have hoped.”
- All of the episodes will be released on Netflix on the same day, so prepare to get your Cornballer out of storage and not shower that day because we’ll have 7 hours of new Arrested Development all at once!
Will Arnett also joked about an AD-themed amusement park. I would totally go, but that got me thinking about what such a theme park would entail. Any thoughts or suggestions? Obviously there would need to be a Mexican themed restaurant where you could get cornballs and plenty of those claw machines, where you could win prizes awards from army for marksmanship and sand racing. Leave it in the comments. 🙂
While you help me plan out the Arrested Development theme park, here’s some inspiration from the World’s First Anal-Rapist.
[Source, Source, Source, Source]
