Today, Hurwitz participated in a panel event put on by The New Yorker, and he was joined by castmembers Bateman, Arnett, Michael Cera, David Cross, Portia de Rossi, Tony Hale, Alia Shawkat, Jeffrey Tambor, and Jessica Walter.  Dave Itzkoff of the New York Times was on hand, and he provided a breakdown of just what was said at the event.

In reference to the movie, Hurwitz confirmed what has long been known: that he and series producer/narrator Ron Howard, "had been talking about this for ages and trying to get this going.”  He then dropped a news-bomb that would tear the banana-stand asunder, saying, “We’re trying to do a limited-run series into the movie.  We’re basically hoping to do nine or 10 episodes, with almost one character per episode.”

"We don’t completely own the property, there are business people involved and studios and that kind of thing," he explained.  "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.”

Bateman chimed in the plan, saying, "There’s business left to be done, but creatively we are all on board and have a very specific plan about how it would come out and what we would do and when we would shoot it. I think we’re targeting next summer to shoot it.”

Of course, we've been hearing about a movie for years, so don't get too excited until it actually, really, and totally happens.  That said, it's damn near impossible not to get psyched about the idea of Arrested Development's return as not only a movie, but a TV show, too.  For more information, including the fact that those old rumors of Michael Cera being the lone holdout amongst the castmembers was just everyone, including Cera, having fun with the public saga, head over to Itzkoff's article.

It's possible that we're all being messed with, but at least this group is good at messing with us.  For your amusement and as a confirmation that all this is not something cooked up in my fevered, imbecilic imagination, here are two tweets from Arnett and Bateman (@arnettwill and @batemanjason) that basically broke this story online: 

Thanks to BuzzFeed.

In August, an unverified rumor suggested that the Arrested Development movie would center on Howard making a movie about the Bluths and their turbulent lives.  Perhaps next year, we'll see if that's true.  Wish with all your hearts, fans of quality.  If we wish hard enough, this could become a reality.