The Scrapped Arrested Development Movie Was Full Of Stars (And Sounds Absolutely Hilarious)

While "Arrested Development" told the story of a wealthy family who lost everything and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together, the movie version would've been a bit more meta. Instead, it would have told the story of the filmmakers who then go and tell that same tale. It's that kind of twisted, fourth wall-breaking blending of fact and fiction that made "Arrested Development" a critical darling in the first place, and so it's no surprise that a film was, at one point, in development.

Ultimately, the movie never happened, but the cast of this would-be film expansion would have certainly been worth the trouble. In an interview on "Hot Ones," star Jason Bateman revealed this movie wouldn't be a feature-length continuation of the show but would have followed the characters as they run amok on a Hollywood film set around the star-studded cast set to portray them. In the role of Bateman's helpful-to-a-fault Michael Bluth would've been Matt Damon, joined by Dr. Phil as Jeffrey Tambor's George Sr., Jonah Hill as Michael Cera's naive George Michael, and Will Ferrell, who would've replaced Will Arnett as Gob.

According to Bateman on an episode of "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend," the only member of the fictional Bluth family who would get to play himself was David Cross' Tobias because, well, "Tobias was an actor." The sitcom star explained that the movie-inside-a-movie was "cruising" through development, but it never actually took off. Instead, we got a fifth season that effectively closed the book on the Bluth family for good.

Back when news broke that "Arrested Development" had been resurrected by Netflix, it felt like we were entering a bold new era of TV. With the invention of streaming platforms that weren't bound to the whims of traditional networks and advertisers, the theory was that streaming would be able to tell offbeat stories that appealed to niche audiences. More than that, these shows could find new audiences in much the same way "Arrested Development" had through DVD box sets.

This dream proved to be short lived. Season 4 received a mixed reception, although this writer believes its bold experiment with episode structure was a deserving follow up to the original. By the time Season 5 dropped, the landscape had changed perceptively, and it landed with little fanfare and a steep drop off critically. In fact, TVLine critic Dave Nemetz flatly explained that he "just didn't laugh all that much," a statement any superfan would have found unbelievable if you told them in the wake of the show's cancellation.

At one point, it looked like "Arrested Development: The Movie" was all but inevitable. Now, it appears everyone has moved on with their lives. Since then, Bateman has traveled into more dramatic territory, most recently in the Netflix crime drama miniseries "Black Rabbit." As Bateman put it bluntly to Conan, "I don't think anybody gives a s***."