Arrested Development News

Official hope has arrived!  It was announced on Sunday at The New Yorker Festival that an Arrested Development movie will happen after a new lead-in season on television.  Fans of the cult classic show have been waiting patiently for word of a movie since its premature cancellation after only three seasons, but were never given any specifics or insights.

In true Fox form, AD was cut to 13 episodes then sacked in 2006.  Led by Jason Bateman (The Change Up), the completely dysfunctional and hysterical Bluth family include Will Arnett (Up All Night), David Cross (Modern Family), Michael Cera (Scott Pilgrim vs. The World), Portia De Rossi (Better Off Ted), Tony Hale (Wuss), Alia Shawkat (Damsels in Distress), Jessica Walter (Archer –voice) and patriarch, Jeffrey Tambor (Mr. Popper’s Peguins).  Narration was also provides by its executive producer, Ron Howard.

Creator Mitch Hurwitz stated that one of the reasons for the hold up has been due to ownership and broadcast rights.  “We don’t completely own the property, there are business people involved and studios and that kind of thing.”  With those issues now sorted out, we can look forward to 10 episodes and the movie.  “Just creatively, I have been working on the screenplay for a long time and found that as time went by, there was so much more to the story,” says Hurwitz.  “In fact, where everyone’s been for five years became a big part of the story.  So in working on the screenplay, I found even if I just gave five minutes per character to that back story, we were halfway through the movie before the characters got together.”  With that in mind, the plan may be to explore each character in an episode as a lead-in to the film.

The series and movie will likely start  filming early 2012 with releases in 2013.  Speculations on where the television episodes will lean toward networks such as Showtime or streaming media outlets like Netflix.  For the faithful, it matters not where it airs nor the cost:  there’s always money in the banana stand.