On Sunday afternoon, Mr. Hurwitz tossed a few more crumbs to the “Arrested Development” faithful at a New Yorker Festival event that reunited him with the show’s ensemble cast, telling the audience that a movie was still in the works, along with a new set of television episodes that would serve as a prelude to the film….

Mr. Hurwitz continued: “We don’t completely own the property, there are business people involved and studios and that kind of thing. 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. 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.”

So, Mr. Hurwitz said, “We’re trying to do a limited-run series into the movie.” After a wave of excited applause died down, he continued, “We’re basically hoping to do nine or 10 episodes, with almost one character per episode.”

– Dave Itzkoff, N.Y. Times.

Man. I try not to let myself get too excited every time news comes out about a possible Arrested Development reunion for a couple of reasons: 1) There has been lots of talk but thus far precious little real action and 2) I’m a tad concerned that if the movie and new shows don’t live up to the first three seasons, they’ll color my impressions of the series as a whole.

But all that said, this is pretty amazing news. I especially like the idea of it returning as a short-run show created with an end-date in mind, so all the story arcs can be carefully scripted from the outset.