I had been feeling like a crazy person for a while. It seemed like I was the only person on the internet who suspected that an Arrested Development movie wasn’t actually a great idea, and that sometimes it’s better to just leave things be. Every time a cast member would open their mouth with some non-news about the impending film version of the perfect TV series, people would get very excited and I would get sort of bummed.
But as time went on the prospects of a movie seemed dimmer and dimmer, and now David Cross is speaking up to say that he doesn’t think it’ll ever happen.
“(I)t’s not going to happen,” Cross told TV Squad. “Way too much time it’s been (since the show ended)… I mean, there’s so many people involved. Everyone’s doing their own thing, you know. And everybody’s aged. It’s just not going to happen. I’m sure I speak for everybody when I say we’d love for it to happen, we’d love to work on it, but just I don’t think… not going to happen.”
Of course that’s not an official word, and of course that could change in a matter of days. But it isn’t like Cross is coming at this from some position of integrity where he wouldn’t want to go back – the guy makes fucking Alvin and the Chipmunks movies, so he’d probably show up at any gig that met his quote. It’s just the opinion of a guy who knows how the behind the scenes stuff is working out, and who is probably always going to be a little bit cynical.
So here’s hoping that Arrested Development is dead, and preserved beautifully for posterity as one of the greatest sitcoms of all time.