Could much-rumored movie be next?

May 25, 2013 at 12:00a.m.

Los Angeles Times

Just about every time one of the nine regular “Arrested Development” cast members has been interviewed over the last six or so years, there comes that moment, usually awkward, where the reporter pauses, shifts gears and meekly begins, “So I just have to ask ...”

“And we’d know immediately where they were going,” David Cross says. “‘Arrested Development: The Movie.’”

“And,” Portia de Rossi adds, “the answer would always be the same. ‘We don’t know. Hopefully, there will be one.’”

Even with the arrival of the Netflix episodes, those questions won’t be going away. “Arrested Development” creator Mitchell Hurwitz designed the 15 new installments to be the first act of a three-act story that will conclude with, yes, the long-promised “Arrested Development” movie.

“So, it’s not really going to be finished until those next two acts are played out,” Jason Bateman says.

That’s not to say that the show’s Netflix run ends with an agonizing cliffhanger that fans will have to wait 18 months (or longer) to see resolved. But the episodes do raise questions, Bateman says, that will be answered only in the movie, which, by the way, hasn’t been greenlighted, though everyone involved is thinking good thoughts.

“It could be in theaters or it might just be a two-hour thing on Netflix,” Bateman says. Or it could, De Rossi interjects, be a whole bunch of movies.

“Ron Howard told me he wants to make a movie every year,” she says.

“Great!” Cross complains. “Now people will be asking us about that for the next five years.”