Las Vegas Weekly

Is ‘Arrested Development’ really coming back?

If you’re an ‘Arrested Development’ fan, this cast reunion photo, shot in New York on October 2, should have you saying, ‘Mama horny, Michael.’

It is the one pop culture rumor that refuses to die—Arrested Development, the short-lived Fox comedy series that has achieved deification status among its fans since going off the air in 2006, is coming back as a movie. Everyone’s heard it, but as Gob once said, “It’s my illusion.” Despite optimism from certain cast members, it has yet to happen.

Well, the rumor is back, only now with a new wrinkle: During an October 2 panel discussion by the Arrested Development cast at the New Yorker Festival, the show’s creator, Mitchell Hurwitz, confirmed that he’s still at work on the movie script, but that he’s also “trying to shoot a limited-run series.” Shortly after that, cast member Jason Bateman tweeted, “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!”

Lots of media folks—no doubt huge Arrested fans—have been quick to scoop up this story and trumpet it as actually happening. But while I am myself an ardent and hardcore fan, I’m less inclined to believe the hype. Amid all the hubbub about how great a cast reunion and revisitation of the Bluth family would be, here’s the key quote from Hurwitz:

“We’re 80 percent of the way to an answer. We don't completely own the property; there are business people involved and studios.”

Uh-oh.

If they haven’t even been able to get a movie done in the last five years—either because of the inability to get the cast reunited or to get a studio committed—how are they going to accomplish a “limited-run series"? And who’s going to air it? Netflix, Hulu and Showtime have been bandied about as possibilities, but again, nothing is definite here.

Please don’t misunderstand me. No one wants to join with his Arrested hermanos-in-arms and support this venture more than yours truly. I would blue myself and do a chicken dance right now at my desk if this was truly happening. But this whole enterprise is beginning to smack of a Bluth plan to build houses in Iraq—it sounds good on paper, but you just end up dealing with a bunch of Saddam Hussein impersonators.

What do you guys think? Will we ever see George Michael, George Sr., Tobias, Buster, Egg, er, Ann, and Henry Winkler’s shark-jumping lawyer together again? Discuss.