Netflix And Showtime Eye Potential New ‘Arrested Development’ Limited Series
Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurtwitz dropped another bombshell today, telling a panel at The New Yorker Festival that he plans to bring the Emmy-winning series back to television for a limited 9-10 episode run 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. I hear 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, whose new entertainment president David Nevins shepherded Arrested Development when he ran Imagine TV and served as an executive producer on the cult series. 20th TV declined comment.
According to attendees at the panel, where Hurwitz was 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.