That’s actually not true at all. We write about it because it’s the best comedy of the past million years, and stories about Arrested Development are largely more interesting than stories about anything else.

This one is no exception.

After months of rumors (that I apparently had never heard) that the new season of A.D. was going to be constructed in such a fashion that the episodes can be played in any order, it turns out that creator Mitch Hurwitz has taken to Twitter to deny that.

Oh well. As far as I’m concerned, the first three seasons can be watched in any order with a such a small drop-off of enjoyment that I’m pretty sure this next season will be the same thing.

Unless the season sucks.

OH NO!

In which case, not cool Netflix and Ron Howard. We’ll find out for sure on May 26th.

The upcoming Netflix episodes will be nonlinear and something of a puzzle, focusing on one character per episode, limiting the possibilities for group chicken dances and Tobias outing himself again in front of the family.

In fact, Hurwitz goes so far as to say that you don’t see them all together again until the movie, for which this season is supposed to be a first act. While we appreciate Hurwitz’s optimism, the film hasn’t been confirmed, and we REALLY want to see them sitting around Lucille 1′s living room under some odd banner.

DO IT, MITCH!

That’s right. Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz ended up with so much extra footage while filming the new episodes, that he feels he’s able to put together an order of twelve to fifteen new episodes of the series — all precursors to the eventual Arrested Development film that is so totally happening some day. As of right now, filming of the series has halted while Hurwitz and crew figure out how to work the additional scenes seamlessly into the larger storyline. It’s expected filming will resume in January with the series premiering this spring. In the meantime, we’ll have to entertain ourselves the old-fashioned way: by talking shit about Netflix. (Deadline)

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT!

With rumors circling that a movie is on the table, and that the Netflix order might go from 10 episodes to 13, creator Mitch Hurwitz has further muddied the waters by suggesting that a film is still on the table, and that the Netflix episodes would serve as the precursor.

Sure, Mitch. WHATEVER.

He also offered up some plot details, saying that the family, after being torn apart at the end of season 3, is forced to come back together and heal.

Because family is the most important thing. Besides breakfast.

Along with the news of the 10-episode comedy atom bomb, we learned from no less than show creator Mitch Hurwitz that Scott Baio’s Bob Loblaw will be returning as well. Of course, it’s biologically impossible to not enjoy the name Bob Loblaw (He lobs law bombs!), but the character didn’t do much for me, as rejecting Lindsay’s advances had become old hat by the time he appeared on the show.

However, there is no shortage of characters that I do feel passionate about, and who should find their way onto the show post-haste. Here are eight such characters.

Feel free to use the comments to remind me that I’m an idiot for not including your favorite character. Someone needs to wipe this shit-eating grin off my face.

Wayne Jarvis

Professionalism is the name of the game with Mr. Jarvis. He does not find the buffoonery of Cirque de Soleil amusing, so it should come as no surprise that he’s also not thrilled with Lindsay and Michael’s brand of buffoonery in getting back at Lucille.

He plays comically over-the-top foil for the Bluth family, constantly shaking his head in disapproval at the unprofessional antics of the family.

Best line (so far): I shall hide behind the couch.

Gene Parmesan

Gene Parmesan, “master of disguise,” doesn’t really seem to be impressing anyone but Lucille Bluth, which leads my filthy mind to think that they have some sort of relationship that wasn’t explored in the first run. While he does manage to surprise Lucille, I think she’s a pretty forgiving audience, as he generally seems to just drape himself in an outfit and mumble.

Wayne Jarvis would not be impressed with Mr. Parmesan’s level of professionalism, especially in light of Parmesan’s constant need to be paid in full, up front.

Best line (so far): I’m sorry. I feel like such an (bleep).

Click here to see the cast’s most embarrassing roles since”Arrested Development” was canceled.

“[I] 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,” said Hurwitz. “So in working on the screenplay, I found even if I just gave five minutes per character to that back story, we were halfway through the movie before the characters got together.”

The plan is to focus each of the new episodes on a different member of the Bluth family, which Jason Bateman confirmed via his Twitter page. “It’s true,” Bateman wrote. “We will do 10 episodes and the movie. Probably shoot them all together next summer for a release in early ’13. VERY excited!”

There’s no word yet on where the new series will air, though Showtime and Netflix have both shown strong interest. Sounds good, just as long as they don’t air on Fox. The network would only show three episodes back-to-back on a Friday night opposite the Olympics before cancellation. (NY Times)

Check out Don’t Get Too Excited For The Return Of Arrested Development

It would appear the festival got most everyone, nabbing Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, Michael Cera, David Cross, Portia de Rossi, Tony Hale, Alia Shawkat, Jeffrey Tambor, Jessica Walter and series creator Mitchell Hurwitz. Wait. They didn’t get Ice, the bounty hunter/party planner. You can’t have a party without ICE!

It will be very convenient to get them all together so they can collectively dodge questions about the film, rather than have to do it individually.

If you’re not a fan of The New Yorker, but are a fan of hilariousl funny people, you might want to check this thing out if you’re in the NYC area, as it will also feature Amy Poehler, Aziz Ansari, Chris Colfer, David Cronenberg, Ellen Barkin, Owen Wilson, Zach Galifianakis Paul Giamatti, the Scissor Sisters, and writers Janet Malcolm, Jonathan Franzen, and Malcolm Gladwell. The event is October 2nd and tickets are available here.

If this festival in any way involves David Cronenberg dancing with Owen Wilson to the Scissor Sisters, it’s a steal at ten times the price.

So what will happen when the juggernaut behind “Sit Down, Shut Up” and “Running Wilde” co-opts the laugh behind Dogville and Dancer in the Dark? Unprecedented popular acceptance, that’s what!

The project actually sounds pretty promising. The Boss of It All focuses on the owner of a company that pretends he has a boss above him so that he will not be held accountable for conveying bad news to his employees. However, when the owner sells the company, the purchasers would like to meet the “boss of it all.” Do you know what ensues then? That’s right. Hijinks.

The project has been in development for almost a year now, with no cast announced, but Hurwitz has always had a knack for casting, so those decisions will lie in good hands. What does this mean for the long-anticipated Arrested Development” movie that Hurwitz has been promising for almost two years now? I got some news for you. There isn’t going to be an “Arrested Development” movie. Maybe your children’s children will see one in which we get a cryogenically frozen David Cross and a 67 year-old Michael Cera still playing an aloof, befuddled teenager, but that’s as close as we’ll get in our lifetime. And that’s a guarantee.*(The Wrap)

*I’m hoping this reverse jinx works and we get an announcement tomorrow that the “AD” movie has been greenlit and all parties are on board.

Have a confusing title

Come up with an unwieldy title that perhaps comes from the realm of psychology, so that the title of your show is almost instantly forgettable. For example, if you were to call the show Welcome Matt, an audience could immediately understand the concept: this must be a character named Matt and he must either be a welcoming person or stepped on. If you call a show Arrested Development it’s confusing and sufficiently disorientating to guarantee that a wide audience never discovers the fruits of your labor.

Audiences love fast cars and exciting vehicles

So see if you can put in some heavy machinery like a stair-car, that isn’t easily associated with speed or sex appeal.

Try to do too much for a 20-minute programme

If in your particular medium an audience is used to a simple plotline or maybe one or two stories, see if you can get eight in there, and find a way that they somehow intertwine. Also, it’s important that you have a lot of anxiety when they don’t intertwine, sufficient to deprive yourself of sleep so that you are miserable during the production of the show – but then upon completion of the show, you’re guaranteed to be miserable, because nobody will watch it.

Add a sprinkle of incest

They’ll never admit it, but viewers love sex. In fact, they love any sort of titillation, with the exception of incest. So focus on that.

First impressions are everything

So if you can screw that up, you’re made. With Arrested Development, we tried showing the deep disdain that connects a family. We wanted to hold up a mirror to American society. And, just as predicted, America looked away.

Don’t be afraid to give characters the same names

Audiences tend to run from confusion. So a show, for instance, where one character is named George Michael, one character is named Michael, one character is named George and one character is named George Oscar (and perhaps another character is named Oscar), will be the kind of show you can almost guarantee people won’t develop a fondness for.

Make easy jokes about minority groups

Whether they be Mexicans, Jews or homosexuals, any group can be dismissed with a few stereotypical cracks. At least, that’s what we tried to do. And given their “lack of coming to the party”, it seems we succeeded!

Squander iconic guest stars

As an example, Liza Minnelli has famously appealed to the homosexual audience. Note: it’s very important to alienate the homosexual audience first, or they might “come to the party”.

Don’t bother with a laughter track

Audiences don’t always know “when to laugh”. By omitting a laugh track you can almost guarantee they’ll never find out.

Audiences like nicely dressed characters. They also enjoy nudity

Split the difference by putting your character in a pair of cut-offs and call him a Never-Nude. Advanced: feel free to dip him in a vat of blue paint. That’s a real turn-off.

Make a show for British sensibilities

And then show it in America.

Ah, Mitch. So smart. So funny. So misunderstood. Here’s hoping your next project finds its intended audience and is exactly as funny as it should be. And also, let’s hope whatever network you work with next gives you fighting chance! (Deadline)

Please let it be true! We, the staff of this site, along with the TV nerd public, are frankly getting antsy with all this speculation and half news. Either make the film or don’t! It could be fast, cheap, funny, and it would satisfy at least a loyal group of AD devotees. At this point it might almost be better to kill the project indefinitely and stop raising the hopes of a few thousand geeks who still fondly remember a show that went off the air five and a half years ago. And remember, if it’s budget issues that are slowing down production, THERE’S ALWAYS MONEY IN THE BANANA STAND!

(via MTV)

Will Arnett as a billionaire is hilarious, right? “Running Wilde” shows each week how Steven Wilde (Arnett) blows his money in competition with fellow billionaire Fa’ad (Peter Serafinowicz), and creates a wacky surreal world of servants and caretakers. It was actually going to be a lot darker if Arnett had his original vision.

More after the jump…

“When we were first talking about doing this show actually I was talking to Mitch [Hurwitz] about the idea of these people in this life and how lonely that must be,” Arnett said in a conference call with the media today. “We originally began the show with Steve on the verge of committing suicide and then deciding not to. That seems dark but that was because we really wanted to explore that. So I think that is something we’d like to get into further into the series. One of the functions of the Fa’ad character is to almost be like the extreme version of Steve in a way. In much the same way that Niles was an extreme version of Frasier. It sort of pushes Steve more into the middle for the audience. They both do live this very lonely existence. That’s one of the things we wanted to examine.”

Until the very special suicide episode, “Running Wilde” will focus on romantic stories between Steve and Emmy (Keri Russell), and heartwarming ones with her daughter Puddle (Stefania Owen). Spoilers follow, but hilarious spoilers.

“We have an episode coming up in two weeks where we tell the story of how Steve and Emmy were going to go to the prom together and then weren’t allowed to be there together. We tell this story of Puddle going to a school dance and how she’s faced with a similar situation. Through that we discover what happened between Steve and Emmy years ago. This boy who’s supposedly not allowed to go to the dance with Puddle because the dad has said Puddle is this kid  grew up in the Amazon, she’s not rich and is not of the same social stature, and Steve now realizes that his dad was wrong so many years ago when he forbid him from being with Emmy. He goes and confronts this boy’s dad played by Andy Richter. What ends up happening is that the guy misinterprets Steve as he talks about not holding people back who are in love, he misinterprets that and thinks Steve coming onto him and the guy turns out is secretly gay. Steve at the same time, as the guy comes onto Steve, Steve misinterprets that as fatherly affection. It’s very much a Mitch Hurwitz story. Things get very complicated.”

For those just joining, Emmy is Steven’s childhood sweetheart. As a teen, Steven rejected Emmy in favor of expensive presents. Now Emmy is an environmentalist who’s lived with a tribe in the Amazon. She comes back to try to stop Wilde Oil, and thinks a good way to do that is living on Steven’s property in their treehouse.

“We have an episode where his stepmom arrives back on the scene and he’s desperately trying to get her out of the picture as she’s trying to turn his life upside down. All with the idea that his objective is to get Emmy to live with him in the house because she’s really the only person he’s really been in love with.”

The love story raises some questions itself though. These aren’t just mismatched lovers who learn something in the end. “What’s complicated is the fact that Emmy, she’s not just this one-dimensional character, she wants Steve to change his tune and then she’ll be fine. She’s engaged. In a way what she’s doing is kind of sh*tty. She’s essentially moved in with this other guy who she’s had a relationship with. It’s complicated.”

So far Puddle seems like the mature one, but that’s going to change too. “I think Steve and Puddle are going to grow to be a lot closer too so that adds another dimension to it. You have this guy, Steve in essence becoming a father like figure to Puddle for better or worse by the way, because who knows if he’s the best role model. She’s really becoming a kid for the first time and Steve is forced to be somewhat more responsible. I think he really likes Puddle so he’s filling the role of male parent in a way, in the way that Andy (David Cross), her fiancé, can’t really do. So she’s allowing him to grow up and he’s allowing her to be a kid.”

This week’s episode, “Oil & Water,” says that Steven vows to quit Wilde oil. That would make “Running Wilde” a short trilogy rather than a series. “It does seem that way although as it turns out, like the mob, you can’t quit Wilde oil.”

“Running Wilde” airs Tuesdays at 9:30 on Fox.

You "Arrested Development" fans are like delusional ex-girlfriends. Sure, the three years you spent with the show were wonderful, and I know it left you with some very special memories. I’m not asking you to forget that. But the fact of the matter is that it’s been gone for four years, but you still talk about it like it was yesterday. The way you bring it up to anyone who will listen is creepy. Just last week, at that party, you asked a total stranger if they had seen it. Doesn’t that come across as pathetic and desperate to you? Face the facts: "Arrested Development" is gone, and it’s not coming back. It’s moved on, and it’s time you did the same.

The best way to get over an old relationship is to start a new one, which is why I’d like you to meet "Running Wilde." It has Mitch Hurwitz and Will Arnett, which is pretty cool. I know it’s not the same, but you can’t go around comparing every show you watch to "Arrested Development." It’s not healthy, and it’s just setting yourself up for disappointment. Why don’t you go in with an open mind and give it a chance? Also, maybe you should up your dosage of Wellbutrin. You’re not looking so good. (Movieline)

See Will Arnett in the "Running Wilde" trailer after the jump.

Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz has been silent thus far in the back-and-forth speculation on whether or not the cult favorite will find its way to the big screen. Until now.

While appearing on a panel alongside series executive producer and Hollywood’s beloved ginger Ron Howard, he was asked about the status of the film. Hurwitz confirmed that it is happening and he will be directing. When pressed for more details, Hurwitz only commented that the script will feature "a heavy jail presence." So there you have it. Once again, not much substantial info. The stars haven’t been contacted and the project doesn’t appear on any production schedules. So let’s reclassify this one from a "Maybe" to a "Strongish Maybe Kinda". Don’t let this one linger in Production Limbo too long. It very well may be our last chance to see Scott Baio on the big screen. (The Playlist)