Will Arnett on Arrested Movie

Gob and the gang may return on the big screen.

Fans of Arrested Development may be small in terms of a television audience, but their numbers and fierce loyalty just may translate to success on the big screen. After the cancellation of the show on Fox last year, speculation of a return on another network, most specifically Showtime, raged on for months.

At this point, the likelihood of a comeback for the show seems unlikely, although creators and cast haven't ruled out the possibility of a feature film version of the show.

While visiting the set of the Bob Odenkirk comedy The Brothers Solomon in Los Angeles this week, IGN had the chance to talk to Will Arnett, who Arrested fans fondly remember as the energetic and awful "illusionist" Gob Bluth.

During interviews for the comedy You, Me and Dupree, co-directors Anthony and Joe Russo purportedly mentioned the possibility of an Arrested Development feature film.

Sitting in the trailer of Will Arnett for a cozy and inviting interview, IGN asked the actor about the possibility. "When did they say that? Yeah, there has been talk of that. I don't know exactly where they're at with that. I've talked about it with Mitch [Hurwitz] and Jason [Bateman] and a little bit with a bunch of people involved with the show and different producers... I'm pretty sure that, obviously it rests on Mitch, any sort of project like that would have to come from him. It would be something that he would be really passionate about. If the story was right and you felt like that the story was right, and by story I mean money, was large enough, then he'd do it…"

Although the prospect of the show returning to small screens appears unlikely, we asked him whether he would still be open to the idea or if he's put the show behind him. "Well, gosh I don't know. It's hard to answer a hypothetical question."

"There are so many moving parts to that. For a long time, we spent the first three years that we were on, we spent almost every week not knowing whether we were going to come back on the following week. Living under those kinds of circumstances, it's not the most ideal. I think that, for the show, in a certain way it actually kind of helped us. We felt like that consummate underdogs. We always kind of used that fear and excitement and anger. I know that Mitch used some of it to fuel the storylines for the show and we used it sometimes in our performances."

"Then with the whole thing about going to Showtime, you know that dragged on for so long, I think that people… By the end of that process, we all kind of felt like the show was over, so I doubt very much that the show would ever come back in a TV show format. But it could live in a different life as a film. That is something that everybody has discussed fairly casually."

As Arnett transitions to the big screen in two Odenkirk projects, Let's Go to Prison and Solomon as well as the Will Ferrell comedy Blades of Glory, he says that the style of Arrested helped him prepare. "It hasn't been that much different. Arrested Development was really like shooting a little movie every week, a twenty minute movie every week."

"Unlike most television sitcoms, we obviously didn't shoot in front of an audience. There was no laugh track on the show, so it was never about hitting the joke and then holding it, it was much more cinematic in that way. Of course it moves a lot quicker in TV. You don't have the luxury of time, you've gotta get the product out. In movies, you have the time to really sort of craft each scene and that's kind of nice."

So, does Arnett miss Gob? "Do I miss Gob? Yeah, to a certain extent I miss Gob. It was a really fun part to play, just that incredible insecurity masked by an incredible amount of bravado. But all of that just a total front for somebody who's not been loved. With that, as an actor, it gave me a lot of license to be kind of awful and simultaneously sweet. We always sort of joked that the writers created these pretty terrible characters. On paper, they were pretty terrible people, and it was always our job to try to make them likable. So I miss that experience, and I do miss Gob, that old rogue."

SOURCE

Oh Will Arnett, you sexy beast. Don't get my hopes up. If an Arrested movie were to actually come to fruition, I could die happy. Complete, fulfilled, and happy.