Mitch Hurwitz: ‘Arrested Development’ Reunion Will ‘Look Very Different’ From Original Version

“Mitch Hurwitz is a bastard. He doesn’t even know that Arrested Development season four should look EXACTLY the same way as seasons one-three did. What’s that, Hurwitz? You want to try something different, stretch your creative muscles like on the oh-so-successful Running Wilde? Well, that’s a huge…blunder. I bet you expected me to say ‘mistake.’ COME OFF,” is what I’m sure many an AD fan exclaimed this morning, after reading USA Today‘s article about Netflix. Because when the show returns in May, it’s not going to look the same.

Arrested is applying a new model, less because of its new home than competing demands for its stars, several of whom appear in other projects. “Contractually, we couldn’t use all the characters in every episode; they were not free to do as much television as they want,” Hurwitz says.

Each of 13 or 14 episodes (up from 10 originally planned) will focus on a single character, and only Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman), the level-headed son who holds the clan together, will appear in all of them. (Michael Cera, who plays son George Michael, is also now among the show’s writers.) (Via)

I’ll assume Hurwitz forgot about Franklin (racist), because Franklin should and will appear in every scene. But will the show look different?

“The show will look very different,” Hurwitz says, and is being assembled as a “very, very complex puzzle” from scenes shot out of sequence over many months…”We’re not jumping from one thing to another; you’re staying with one character,” while other cast members appear in smaller roles, and recurring characters played by Henry Winkler and Liza Minnelli, among others, will return.

“The bigger story is the family has fallen apart at the start of our show,” Hurwitz says. “They all went their own way, without Michael holding them together, so they’re left to their own devices, and they’re not the most successful devices.” The season is designed as a “first act to what we eventually want to do, which is a big movie,” though there’s no guarantee it will ever get made.

“Each individual (episode) kind of depicts what happens in 2006 as the Bluths fled from the law on the Queen Mary” in what was once the series’ finale, then explains what’s happened to them since and leaves them in the present day, he says. (Via)

Maybe Hurwitz and the other writers are going to Newsroom it and comment on cultural events that happened years ago? In the George Michael episode, they can mock Dennis Kucinich trying to impeach Dick Cheney, and for Lindsay’s, the unrelenting coverage of the balloon boy hoax. I think I speak for everyone when I say we want, nay, need to know Tobias’s thoughts on Larry Craig, if only to hear David Cross say “wide guy.”

(Via USA Today)