The news that Arrested Development fans have been working for has finally arrived. Yes, there is going to be a movie, along with a ten-part television mini-series that ties into the plot of the highly anticipated 2013 film.
This weekend at the New Yorker Festival, series creator Mitchell Hurwitz made the announcement of a nine or ten episode miniseries with an unannounced network as a lead up to a feature length film.
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. 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.
You can view the whole panel discussion on Facebook.
Bateman tweeted that the possible starting date of shooting would be ‘next summer’ with an estimated release date around 2013, but Hurwitz wasn’t as hopeful, saying “Perhaps…in the fall. This isn’t my decision.”
Hurwitz previously worked on shows like the Golden Girls and, more recently, on the failed show Running Wilde starring Arrested cast member Will Arnett. The show, produced and narrated by Ron ‘Opie’ Howard, utilized hand-held cameras, deadpan acting, and frequent (censored) adult language in order to create the environment of a documentary of a habitually dysfunctional wealthy family.
Starring Jason Bateman, it focused on the experiences of his character Michael Bluth who is forced to reunite with his family after his father, played by Jeffrey Tambor, is arrested for fraud, embezzlement and ‘light’ treason. When we left off after the show’s third and final season, Michael and his son George Michael (played by Michael Cera, whose career sky-rocketed after he appeared in this sitcom) have boarded the family yacht, the C-Word, and raced off into the unknown to escape the police closing in on their family after their patriarch’s involvement with Saddam Hussein was uncovered.
The recipient of six Emmys and a Golden Globe, fans were bewildered when Fox cancelled the popular show due to low ratings, and have been calling for closure ever since. Now, five years after the show’s last episode, they’re finally going to get what they’ve been asking for.
Thank God. I need the money.