Arrested Development movie is on the way: Will Arnett

LOS ANGELES—There will definitely be a movie version of the television series Arrested Development. However, fans of the show, which had a small but loyal audience, have been hearing that since the show went off the air in 2006. Will Arnett, who won an Emmy nomination for the show, says that he is getting a little tired of telling people that it’s on its way.

“I hate to say the same thing that I have been saying for a long time which is ”˜it’s happening’ but ”˜it’s happening,’” says Arnett, who is at a Los Angeles hotel to promote the animated film Monsters vs. Aliens. (It opens March 27.) “Hopefully we will get to it by the end of this year. (The show’s creator) Mitch Hurwitz is actively working on a script and it depends on Mitch’s comfort level with the script he writes. But the goal is to get going on it by the end of the year and we are all very excited about it.”

Arnett’s reluctance to talk about firm dates is directly related to the fact he has yet to see a written word. “I have not read it yet. There is not an actual completed document and I don’t know if there is a started document. There may be an empty Word document on Mitch’s desktop but he is actively developing it right now and I am optimistic.”

He admits, though, that if Hurwitz doesn’t start filling up his Word documents with a script pretty soon the film, which was supposed to start shooting in July just a few months ago, could run into another obstacle. Since Arrested Development went off the air several cast members have used its notoriety to get work.

Busy alumni include Michael Cera, who is one of Hollywood’s most in-demand young actors, Jason Bateman who co-starred with Cera in last year’s indie hit Juno and Arnett himself, who is currently shooting the series Sit Down, Shut Up. “Getting the cast back is going to be one of the potential stumbling blocks,” he says, “but it is something that everyone has on their radar. Admittedly it is one of the reasons why it is not starting in July. Everyone has to get on the same page schedule-wise.”