UPDATE: So, we’re all wondering who will pick up Arrested Development‘s fourth “limited release” season. In the infamous “S.O.B.s” episode, Michael (Bateman) and George Sr. (Tambor) facetiously batted around meta references to HBO and Showtime picking up AD after its cancellation on Fox, but could these jokes be coming true? According to Deadline, rumors are cir-sum-venting Showtime and Netflix (which has been seeking opportunity for original programming) as potentials to air the upcoming Arrested Development episodes, but of course, nothing is at all cemented yet.
EARLIER: It ain’t easy being… an Arrested Development fan. For five years now, we’ve been told that there was a movie version of our favorite series was in the works. And every time creator Mitch Hurwitz or one of the Bluths shared some words of encouragement, we’d reluctantly let our hopes rise just a bit…only, a few months later, to hear that the script had yet to be written and the actors were perpetually tied up in other projects. It’s enough to incur a frustrated “Come on!” every single time.
But somehow, and call it blind faith, this time around, the news seems solid as Iraq. This weekend, Hurwitz and the cast of Arrested Development (including Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, Michael Cera, Portia de Rossi, David Cross, Alia Shawkat, Tony Hale, Jeffrey Tambor, Jessica Walters and director/producer Ron Howard as the narrator) announced at a New Yorker Festival panel that they would be putting together a new season of about ten episodes, followed by the long awaited movie.
Hurwitz explained that the rationale for the development of a new season: “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.” Each episode of the new season would be dedicated to one of the characters, explaining what he or she has been up to since the eventful series finale.
Mention was made regarding the summer of 2012 as the estimated start of production.
So yes, we’re all a little wary to accept this as definite. But if we let our optimistic sides run wild a little, we can accept that this is the biggest thing to happen since Uniprod hired that wee-brain to run Drama Development.
It’s surely exciting news. Let’s just hope in a few months time, Hurwitz isn’t muttering, “I’ve made a huge mistake.”
Source: New York Times, Deadline
