Netflix’s Ozark will start production this fall on a super-sized fourth season to end the show, and it’ll be wild to see how they follow up on that bloody third-season cliffhanger. Jason Bateman recently revealed that he made the tough decision to break tradition and not direct the season’s first two episodes, so that filming could go off with a few hitches as possible. The family’s messes will all be fully laundered, finally, and hopefully, there will be plenty of Marty Byrde losing his sh*t, and yep, there’s already a scripted ending.
Even though Bateman isn’t involved in writing the show, he is, as one might expect, aware of how the show ends and whether Marty and Wendy Byrde get away with all of their ill-gotten gains. As he told IndieWire, he’s tried not to press showrunner Chris Mundy too hard on specifics, but he needed to know whether real consequences were afoot: “Specifically, what kind of happens at the end of the last episode: I know, and it’s great.”
Yes, vague. I like to think that, even though Marty’s done some bad things, he and the fam will somehow still end up in Aruba, soaking up the sun and… enjoying wearing colors other than blue? I kid on that last detail, but Bateman did drop some hints on why the show favors that desaturated color palette. He apparently started experimenting while directing Bad Words and The Family Fang and decided that “flatly lit, and with all wide lenses, super-saturated colors” didn’t need to be a rule for comedies, and he simply kept that ball rolling when he started work on Ozark.
Previously, Ozark Director of Photography Ben Kutchins confirmed to Decider that Bateman was definitely part of creating “a distinct look” for the series, and that comes through in “the way that we color correct the episodes,” among other factors that provide for a unique feel. They certainly succeeded, though it’d really be something if they started throwing pops of orange around. Or at least do that when Ruth enters the final season for the first time because (let’s face it) she’s gonna rule the world someday.
