Jason Bateman Finally Reveals The Scrapped Arrested Development Movie Cast
Jason Bateman reveals the scrapped Arrested Development movie had a stacked cast — Matt Damon, Jonah Hill, Will Ferrell, even Dr. Phil — before the plug was pulled.
Arrested Development never got its big-screen victory lap, and yeah, I still think seasons 4 and 5 didn’t hit the sweet spot of those first three. But Jason Bateman just dropped some very inside-baseball details about the movie that almost happened, and it sounds exactly as meta and chaotic as you’d hope.
Bateman spilled it on Hot Ones (while his face melted)
On Hot Ones, Sean Evans asked Bateman about the long-rumored Arrested Development movie, right as Bateman was trying to survive a wing drenched in Funken Hot sauce, which clocks in at 670,000 on the Scoville scale. Bateman said the project was closer than fans might think, and the premise was classic Arrested: a movie about the Bluths being made inside the world of Arrested Development, with the Bluths themselves showing up on set to watch their own story get filmed. Michael, naturally, would be way too involved.
"It was gonna be the movie inside the movie."
Bateman even joked he’d be the guy hovering around Matt Damon with way too many notes, because yes, the plan involved a famous actor playing Michael Bluth. And this is where it gets wild.
The meta-casting plan was bonkers (in a good way)
- Dr. Phil as George Bluth Sr., stepping in for Jeffrey Tambor. That is not a typo.
- Will Ferrell circling the role of Gob, in conversations with Will Arnett.
- Jonah Hill possibly taking over George Michael from Michael Cera, partly because of the Superbad connection at the time.
- Matt Damon as Michael Bluth — and it was Damon who approached Bateman about playing him.
This has been teased since 2006, because of course it has
If you remember the season 3 finale, Ron Howard (the show’s narrator who later played himself on the series) told Maeby that her family’s saga would work better as a film than a TV show. Peak meta. The series eventually came back in 2013 with season 4 and wrapped its fifth and final season in 2019, but the movie never materialized.
Would it still work now?
Honestly, the timing probably would have been perfect right after the Fox run ended, when the Bluth vibes were still pristine. But I’m not convinced it would be a "huge mistake" to try it now — the movie-within-the-show idea is so Arrested it almost writes itself. What do you think? When would you have greenlit it? Sound off. And if you need to cool down from all that casting chaos, there’s always money in the banana stand.