AUSTIN, Tex. â€" For years after the cult series “Arrested Development†went off the air, the question was whether a movie about the demented Bluth family would follow. Now that the show, which ended in 2006, is getting new life with 14 more episodes on Netflix this spring, that was still the question of the hour at a South by Southwest festival Q&A session with Mitch Hurwitz, the show’s creator, and two of its stars, Will Arnett and Jeffrey Tambor.
After joking about frozen banana stands (crucial to the Bluth empire) and giving a shoutout to Maria Bamford (she plays “a hilarious mess,†in Mr. Hurwitz’s words), the three talked about fans’ desire for a movie.
“People are already mad,†Mr. Arnett said, “and they haven’t even seen this.†He was referring to the new episodes, which will update viewers on each of the Bluths, serving as a kind of Act 1 of a larger story that coud potentially be told on the big screen.
“What we don’t have is a movie deal, Mr. Hurwitz said, possibly because, as he noted, he hasn’t written a screenplay or pitched the idea to movie executives.
In TV, he said, he didn’t necessarily have to show scripts to anyone beforehand and he preferred it that way. He didn’t even like to hold table reads with the “Arrested Development†cast. “Maybe it’s cowardice on my part but when it comes to material getting judged, I’d rather not go through that phase.â€
