Tuned In

Arrested Development to Definitely Possibly Happen Again

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As surely as there is always money in the banana stand, there is always eternal optimism—encouraged by remarks by Arrested Development principals every half year or so—that the cast members of the show will reunite again and make the much-rumored Arrested Development movie. Sunday at the New Yorker Festival in New York City, accompanied by the reassembled cast, creator Mitch Hurwitz upped the ante, saying that they also intend to make a nine- or ten-episode AD miniseries as prelude to a movie.

And all that will happen if—you knew there was an if!—somebody with money and a TV-show-and-movie-making machine agrees to commit those resources to Hurwitz and his cast.

Here’s what I believe is true: that Hurwitz and the cast members would really like to make more Arrested Development. That they have plans, of some degree of specificity, to get together should a studio pony up the money to make that a possibility. That there have been “talks,” because people talk about things, what’s the harm?, about a project. And that all of those things are as true now as they have been all the periodic times, regularly since 2006, that Hurwitz, Jason Bateman or another cast member has told the press that the movie is about to get signed, that there’s a script, that they are going to start shooting in [future date span here].

It could all happen, of course, I hope it does, and it may well be that, behind the scenes, the possibility is more serious than it has been during all the earlier flurries of brief excitement. (I would like to see those Deadwood movies too!) But at this point I need to see more evidence than comments at an event that the Arrested cast happened to be together at. After so many false hopes, I will believe that an Arrested Development movie exists when I am watching the closing credits, and actually, I will probably need to check for evidence that the memories of the movie I just saw were not incepted.

At minimum, I’ll wait for a signed commitment before I get excited. Until then, no offense to the good Hurwitz and company, but high hopes are not much sturdier than a Bluth Company model home facade.