Seeing as they’ve spent years five talking about making an Arrested Development movie with nothing actually materialising, you’d have thought creator Mitchell Hurwitz would be keeping his ambitions in check. But now it appears he’s expanding the plans to take in a limited-run return to TV for the series in the run-up to the still planned movie.
Hurwitz revealed the news himself at The New Yorker Festival (via TVLine), saying “We’re trying to do a limited-run series into the movie. We’re basically hoping to do nine or 10 episodes, with almost one character per episode.”
This new season apparently comes from a desire to fill the fans in on what the Bluth family has been up to these past five years since the show was cancelled. “We don’t completely own the property, there are business people involved and studios and that kind of thing. 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. 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.”
Series star Jason Bateman also chimed in on Twitter, saying “It’s true. We will do 10 episodes and the movie. Probably shoot them all together next summer for a release in early ’13. VERY excited!”
To me it all still sounds pretty pie in the sky. While the cast, crew and fans are stunningly loyal and desperate for this to happen, it’s difficult to see someone agreeing to fund both the TV return and a movie when there isn’t much evidence of interest in the franchise beyond its hardcore supporters – and it would need mainstream penetration to make financial sense. It would be fantastic if they can pull it off, but it still seems a bit of a long shot. A lot may now depend on finding a US cable channel that’s desperate to air the new series, as then a deal might emerge that would allow both that and the movie to happen.