'Arrested Development' To Return On Big And Small Screens

It looks like all the cautious speculation and hopeful rumors about an Arrested Development movie in the works have finally been confirmed. But wait, all you Bluth fans … it gets even better.

Not only will there be a film that picks up with the members of the Bluth family five years after the show's highly protested cancellation in 2006, treating the hiatus in real time, but the smart, critically acclaimed show will also return for nine to ten new television episodes, each centered around a different character, and what they've been up to in the meantime.

"It's true," the show's star Jason Bateman, who played straight man Michael Bluth, tweeted about the news. "We will do 10 episodes and the movie. Probably shoot them all together next summer for a release in early '13. VERY excited." According to Jeffrey Tambor, who played the morally ambiguous Bluth patriarch on the show, "everyone's on board" for the revival of the series, reports The Huffington Post. This includes the comically gifted ensemble cast of David Cross, Will Arnett, Portia De Rossi, Tony Hale, Michael Cera, Alia Shawkat and Jessica Walter.

Creator Mitch Hurwitz also had some encouraging words for fans. "Just creatively, I have been working on the screenplay for a long time and found that as time went by, there was so much more to the story. In fact, where everyone's been for five years became a big part of the story," he said, explaining the need for television episodes to lead up to the movie, reports The New York Times.

Timelines are still unclear and a lot has to be worked out. "We don't completely own the property," Hurwitz pointed out; plus, "there are business people involved and studios and that kind of thing." But "creatively we are all on board," he assured.