Jason Bateman admits 'Horrible Bosses 2' failed

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 20 (UPI) -- Jason Bateman admitted that Horrible Bosses 2 bombed in the box office, joking the 2014 flick was just a "paycheck" for the cast.

The actor spoke with Marc Maron on the WTF podcast earlier this month to discuss his career and the Horrible Bosses sequel. According to him, the comedy "was garbage as far as the box office goes."

"Who knows whether it was on the merits or when they released it," he said, "but it did not do any money."

Bateman acted alongside Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Aniston in the film, which he didn't believe had to be made. "Don't go out and buy a bunch of tickets for the first one unless you want a second one because we don't have any discipline in this town," Bateman jokingly said, blaming the audience's call for a sequel.

"It's the path of least resistance."

The Arrested Development actor expressed his love for both films and quite simply blamed timing on the sequel's failure. "People basically just weren't interested in seeing another one," he continued. "[People thought,] 'And it's Thanksgiving, and I'm with my family, and I'm not going to take my mom and dad to go see [expletive] jokes.'"

"I guess there is a reason R-rated comedies don't get released during a big family vacation," he concluded.

When it comes to Bateman's longtime work with Arrested Development, the actor told Maron that season four's lackluster response on Netflix was due to some marketing slip-ups.

"[The episodes] were meant to be the first act of a three-act story that [Mitch Hurwitz] had in his head. And the second two acts...are still yet to be told," he said.

"He thought it would be fun to do the first act in some episodes. And that's what that was, but Netflix called it 'season four,' which was a little disingenuous because it implied that the show was coming back. And that's not what the show was..."

"I think it was a little confusing and frankly underwhelming for the audience. That was unfortunate. It wasn't branded honestly. Or correctly, I should say."