‘Arrested Development’ Creator to Recut Season Four Chronologically
Mitch Hurwitz is re-editing Season Four of Arrested Development to run in chronological order, as opposed to the jumbled timelines and one-character-per-episode structure that marked the beloved show’s return to Netflix last year.
In his chat with Pretentious Film Majors, Hurwitz didn’t say when, or where, the new cut would appear, but Arrested Development fans who felt the convoluted, time-hopping structure detracted from the show’s return should be pleased by the news. In fact, Hurwitz’s new edit won’t be the first chronological version of Season Four, as one Redditor created their own version following the show’s return.
While the structure of Season Four was the result of Hurwitz and his staff working around the cast’s conflicting schedules, the creator also spoke about how expectations changed his approach: “I originally thought, let me just do these nine little webisodes,” he said. “I’m waiting to get this movie made, I’ll go to Netflix, I’ll say, ‘Will you do these little 15, 20-minute things about where each character is?’ And then the press came out, ‘Arrested‘s coming back, Arrested‘s coming back!’ So I felt this pull like, ‘I don’t have the whole cast, but I’m going to have to deliver on this somehow.”
Along with the new cut of Season Four, Hurwitz reiterated that the Arrested Development saga isn’t over. The future of the show remains up to 20th Century Fox, which owns the rights, but Hurwitz said, “There’s more of a story that has to be told somehow. We’ve got the whole story broken. And Season Four was always meant to be act one of the three-act structure where everything goes sour.”