It’s always possible that Arrested Development Season 5 finally gets its s— together in the next year, but in the meantime, creator Mitch Hurwitz wants to re-release Season 4 entirely. Hurwitz confirms that a network-style 22-episode, 22-minute re-edit of the fragmented Season 4 sits on the shelf, with “totally different storytelling.”

Following the TCA press tour panel, IndieWire had a chance to catch up with Hurwitz for an update on his involved re-edit of the controversial fourth season, which ran for fifteen episodes of varying lengths above 31 minutes apiece. Hurwitz took on the personal responsibility after being alerted to the likelihood of someone else cutting the episodes for syndication, before realizing “It really works! It’s totally different storytelling with all of these millions of pieces.”

As to what feels different about the 22-episode version, which includes re-recorded narration from Ron Howard, and a much-earlier reveal of Lucille 2's apparent murder, says Hurwitz:

It took a huge amount of time. The editing was not as hard as the planning of it, and moving these pieces around … I didn’t want to get to the end and have everyone pissed off that we didn’t solve [the murder]. Now it’s like, something happens to Liza Minnelli. The narrative is not the same, it’s not about one character. It was about finding thematic connections.

Hurwitz noted that no one would likely see the re-edit without Netflix moving forward on Season 5, but his words leave us wanting more:

For the average person who didn’t know anything about the show, it makes such a difference. A 36-minute episode vs. a 22-minute episode, even if you’re watching them back-to-back, it just skips along… I hope somebody gets to see it!

We do too, Mitch. We do too.

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