More Maybe's for the Bluth Family

" Yeah, I'm gonna need a leather jacket for when I'm on my hog and need to go into a controlled slide."

I just stumbled upon this bit of news: Arrested Development will be returning for not only the long promised feature film, but show runner, Mitchell Hurwitz, and producer, Ron Howard, also tell us that there will be a small, perhaps, ten episode run leading up to the movie. As a lover of  all things Bluth, I am overjoyed and the prospect of a film. I'm giddy at even the mention of new televised episodes, but I have to ask myself if the addition of a new season will make the return of the Bluths even more unlikely?

I, too, have my fingers crossed that this plan will come to fruition, and I felt the same about Ron Howard's unbelievably ambitious blueprint for bringing Stephen King's Dark Tower to the screen. If you don't know how that ended (http://blog.moviefone.com/2011/07/19/ron-howard-dark-tower/), I will tell you: the people with the checkbooks found it a bit too ambitious. Disappointing? Of course. Surprising? Not at all. While the ambition of the Arrested Development plan isn't as bold as that of Dark Tower, it is still ambitious. It is true that Dark Tower and Arrested Development both have built in audiences, but I think it's important to note that Dark Tower, unlike Arrested Development is untested material in these mediums. At least with that property the studios can hope the franchise approach works in their favor and they make stupid amounts of money. Arrested Development, on the other hand, from a particular point of view, is just a failed television show. Yes, they won (and deserved) Emmy's and earned a legion of fans that one might assume has grown steadily since the shows unfortunate demise. Still, the show ran for three seasons (the last with fewer episodes) and was cancelled almost five years ago. Some might not see such an expansive project for a long cancelled television show as a safe investment.

My real concern is that with the addition of the episodes, the future of the Bluths is even more perilous than before. I have always hoped, but possibly never really believed, the movie would get made. All the same, I have always kept hope alive because of how awesome we all know it would be. I want to see ten episodes and a movie, but I'm afraid asking for ten episodes will get me more of what we're already getting: a whole lot of maybe's. Maybe we'll get a movie. Maybe we'll get new shows, too, but maybe we'll get nothing.

http://insidetv.ew.com/2011/10/02/netflix-or-showtime-who-will-nab-the-new-arrested-development-limited-series/