Arrested Development To Return With New Episodes and Film

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A television with a small but devoted following may have finally gotten their wish and then some. Deadline Hollywood is reporting that Arrested Development, critically lauded but never able to find an audience on television, will be returning. And not just for the movie, which had been rumored for a while.

Per Deadline:

Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurtwitz told a panel at The New Yorker Festival that he plans to bring the Emmy-winning series back. It’ll initially run for a limited 9-10 episode season before proceeding with the long-gestating Arrested Development movie.

— He didn’t specify where the potential series would air as it doesn’t necessarily have to run on Fox, which carried the mothership series. Deadline has said that 20th Century Fox TV, which co-produced Arrested Development with Imagine TV, has had talks with Netflix (which has been on the hunt for original programming) and Showtime. Showtime will be the interesting play here; Showtime Entertainment President David Nevins shepherded Arrested Development when he ran Imagine TV and was an executive producer on it.

— Joined by series stars Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, Portia de Rossi, Michael Cera, Tony Hale, Jeffrey Tambor, David Cross, Alia Shawkat and Jessica Walter, Hurwitz laid out his plan to have each installment focus on a different member of the Bluth clan. Bateman later weighed in on the announcement on Twitter. “It’s true,” he wrote. “We will do 10 episodes and the movie. Probably shoot them all together next summer for a release in early ’13. VERY excited!” That would mean launching the follow-up limited series on the 10th anniversary of the original, which premiered in 2003 and ran on Fox for 3 seasons.

What does this mean? For long suffering fans of the show that were disappointed when it went off the air, this is even better than the film that’s been rumored at for years. With what appears to be almost the entire cast coming back as well, fans of the show will get to experience more of the show.

Throw in a film and if you’re a fan of the show you have to be excited.

What do you think? Do you want to see more Arrested Development? Were you happy with the three seasons that made it to air? Let us know below!