Good news, racially insensitive puppet fans! Franklin Delano Bluth will return for Season 4 of Arrested Development, and with some of Larry Hagman's hair on his head to boot! Well, he *may *return - if you take some of our exclusive Jason Bateman quotes below incredibly literally, anyway.
Mr. Bateman was in the **Empire Podcast **studio recently to promote his latest feature film, Identity Thief, and after quizzing his co-star Melissa McCarthy about the current state of play with the Bridesmaids sequel, we thought it only fair we asked Michael Bluth how things were with the highly-anticipated resurrection of Arrested Development on Netflix.
"We’re done shooting it and it was great. Also, it will be extremely complicated for the viewers. 14 episodes, all separate, with each character getting their own episode, but all the action happens simultaneously. So you can stop my episode at the very moment that, say, Gob rides by on his Segway and then click into his episode and follow him."
"I don’t know how Mitchell Hurwitz wrote it, shot it or scheduled it, I don’t know how he’s editing it but it’ll be amazing. I think. And it’s only the first third of a three part story; the second two parts will be in the movie. So this is the first act, and the movie is act two and three. They’re all just asking questions that the movie itself will answer."
Will it be like a ‘Who Shot JR?’ type deal then?
"I can neither confirm nor deny that. I *will *say that some of Larry Hagman’s hair makes it into the third episode, however. The hair is on Franklin the puppet."
Many of these details have already been in the media from a variety of different sources, but it's great to hear it from the proverbial horse's proverbial mouth that a full-length feature film is definitely in the works. Then there's this exceptionally intriguing use of Netflix's superpower - the power to chose any episode at any one time via your remote control - to create a labyrinthine brain-bender of a sitcom. Think Inception, only with more banana stands.
Season 4 of Arrested Development is set to arrive on Netflix come May this year. Identity Thief, meanwhile, is already out in the US, but will only hit British shores come March 22. Be sure to look out for the full podcast interview on the same date, or just subscribe now via SoundCloud, iTunes or our handy RSS feed so you definitely don't miss out...