'Arrested Development' creator confident of movie deal

There is no Arrested Development movie deal — yet. But creator Mitch Hurwitz says he still expects it to happen. “I’m confident that we will succeed at that,” Hurwitz said at an appearance at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin on Sunday, along with show cast members Will Arnett and Jeffrey Tambor.

Arnett noted that fans are upset that there’s no movie deal in place even though the cult-favorite has a 14-episode fourth season set to debut via Netflix in May. “People are already mad and they haven’t even seen this,” Arnett said.

Hurwitz made it clear that the upcoming season very much serves as a ramp up to a feature film (“There is a bigger story out there that does exist”), even more so upon a repeat viewing. Each episode primarily focuses on one character. As previously reported, the entire fourth season will be released on the same day, just like Netflix’ strategy with its recent drama House of Cards.

The Arrested team screened two clips from the show. One that was particularly funny (and gross) showed Lucille (Jessica Walter) smoking a cigarette and blowing the smoke into her clingy son Buster’s (Tony Hale) mouth, and then he takes the smoke and blows it out the patio.