Seriously, Folks, Stop Asking Jason Bateman About the ‘Arrested Development’ Movie
From the amount of endless online speculation that goes on about a possible "Arrested Development" movie, you'd think it was the cinematic equivalent of "The Lord of the Rings," "Citizen Kane" and "The Tree of Life" all rolled up into one. (In 3D.) We're not ones to tsk-tsk certain weird media biases, but, c'mon, folks: Other than the people who cover movies and television (and the media-savvy people who read such sites), does anybody care about a show that, although terrific, was always a ratings loser? No -- no, they don't.
And yet here we are, more than five years after the last episode of the Emmy-winning Fox series aired, and people are still asking series star Jason Bateman questions about an "Arrested Development" movie.
To be fair, the latest instance came about from a fan. During an event promoting his upcoming "Horrible Bosses," Bateman was asked if his film's co-star, Jennifer Aniston, would get a cameo in the "Arrested Development" movie that is never, ever going to happen.
Bateman was nothing but gracious:
"I'm always so hesitant in saying anything about the movie," he said. "Because even if I say I have no comment, then that is a headline: 'Jason Bateman Talks About The Arrested Development Movie! He Said He Had No Comment!' I always feel so bad, because we're not trying to perpetuate no news at all. But we politely answer when we're asked, and there is no update."
Nicely done, sir. He doesn't need to keep answering this question: There are no updates! Leave the poor man alone! Of course, he then went ahead and said this:
"It should be a movie," he said. "Everybody creatively wants to do it but as you can imagine probably very complicated business things need to happen beforehand."
No! Stop it, Bateman! You've just created another headline! Look at the bottom of this post: See, there it is! It's what you said! Stop doing that!
We understand how film blogging works. Sites send writers to junkets to ask actors about any progress reports on movies that might or might not happen at some point in the future. The actor, not wanting to say, "Hell if I know!" instead tries to be nice and give some crumb of information, usually in the "I met with the director" vein. And then, boom, it's "Big Actor X met with Big Director Y to discuss Such-and-Such Big Film." We went through this with "Ghostbusters 3," but "Arrested Development: The Movie" is perhaps even more annoying.
Don't get us wrong: We liked the show. A lot. But why is there such desire to turn it into a movie? We know this isn't coming from nowhere: There have been serious talks about making it happen, but the media's fascination with this project, no matter how stalled it appears, is baffling. Given our druthers, we'd rather have casting updates on "The Hunger Games" every day for the rest of our lives than have to read one more post about what Will Arnett thinks about when the "Arrested Development" movie will start shooting. So, let's put it to bed, shall we? If there is actual news about an "Arrested Development" movie, we'll gladly talk about it. But even if this movie does see the light of day, be prepared for it to not perform all that well -- and for a lot of people in the media to say, "Huh, why didn't it do very well? We were all excited about it."
"We" were the only ones, folks.
Jason Bateman On 'Arrested Development' Movie: 'Everybody Creatively Wants To Do It' [MTV Movies Blog]
