Another day, another Jason Bateman interview where the actor takes a moment out of promoting his current gig, “Hancock,” to promote an old / new gig: “Arrested Development” the movie.
“Hancock,” despite the mediocre reviews, doesn’t need the help, right? Apparently Will Smith being as teflon proof as R. Kelly when it comes to any critical daggers that have been thrown his way.
While Bateman couldn’t really update the status of the film and certainly made no mention of shooting in front of the cameras next year (like the London Times reported – don’t believe everything you’re told by a huckster, mates), he did provide some details to MTV that didn’t sound totally unreasonable and implausible given his nature.
The big delay as you might expect for a show that was cult-adored, but ignored by the masses, is money.
“We all want to do it. All the actors want to do it, the writers want to do it, and the boss wants to do it. And they are working on making a deal, probably as we speak. But it’s a long, sort of drawn-out, complicated business process. ‘Arrested Development’ is such a specific tone, it doesn’t lend itself to mass appeal, as played out by the fact that it’s canceled. So it has to be done for a price. They can’t spend the money they spent on ‘Hancock.’ “
An announcement on the film’s progress could be made within a month (knowing Batemen, factor in another 12-14 weeks).
“So they have to shoot it for a small price, and we have to figure out if we can do it for that price. They’re working it out, and hopefully we’ll be able to know something in the next month.”
Do they need to start a friggin’ Paypal account? Christ.
What’s it about? He’s not saying, but did say the series creator Mitchell Hurwitz does have a typically fucked-up idea. “It’s typically bent and twisted. He’s got a really, really good idea for the movie version that would not be just simply the equivalent of four episodes back to back to back. It’s actually something that would be specific to the medium of film.”
We’ll give Bateman the benefit of the doubt…for now. But if we don’t hear anything in four weeks we won’t exactly be shocked.
