Jason Bateman on (Sort of) Breaking Bad for Ozark and Arrested Development's Return

Netflix's Ozark is now streaming

By Chris Harnick Jul 21, 2017 5:38 PMTags
Watch: Jason Bateman Plays a Gangster in Netflix's "Ozark"

Michael Bluth has turned to a life of crime! Well, his family was already involved in shady dealings on Arrested Development, but this time it's Jason Bateman who's breaking bad in Netflix's Ozark.

Ozark stars Bateman as a Chicago financial advisor who has secretly been laundering money for a drug kingpin. Things take a turn—as they are bound to do in a TV show about normal folks and drug dealers—and Bateman's character, Marty Byrde, takes his family to the Ozarks, a mountain region primarily in Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Once there, it's not smooth sailing and he tangles with local drug dealers and a gang who wants his money. Oh, and the FBI is on his tail.

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Like Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston before him, Bateman hails from a primarily comedic background, but he's not pulling a Walter White to Heisenberg in Ozark.

"I'm not straight gangster in this. I'm just kind of the normal guy that I really enjoy playing, so I can kind of be the audience in film or television. It feels pretty similar to me except unpleasant things are happening to this character I'm playing," he said.

Ozark is just the latest Netflix project for Bateman. He'll return to the world of the Bluths in Arrested Development season five, which is set for 2018. He starts shooting the new season in a few weeks and this time, the whole gang—Jessica Walter, Tony Hale, Jeffrey Tambor, Alia Shawkat, Portia de Rossi, Michael Cera, Will Arnett, David Cross—is back together, unlike the fourth season which featured the characters off in their own little worlds primarily.

"It was just all scheduled out and planned out well," he told E! News. "And we didn't have some of the same sort of limitations about series exclusivity this time around."

Ozark is now streaming on Netflix.