'Arrested Development' Season Four Spans 13 'Audacious' Episodes

Tobias Fünke, certified analrapist and the biggest blowhard of them all, is coming soon to a computer screen near you (with a fresh coat of blue paint and a new pair of cutoffs no less) thanks to the resurrection of "Arrested Development."

The cult comedy series makes its long (and we mean long) anticipated return in 2013 courtesy of Netflix, putting an end to comedian David Cross' "I'll believe it when I see it" stance once and for all. But even with production on the series back in full swing, the development of "Development" was often a slow, painful process for the parties involved.

"I don't know of any project that's had a shelf life [like this]," Cross told Rolling Stone on the "Arrested Development" set. "It was about a four-and-a-half year window of people thinking, 'OK, it might be any month now that it starts.' You know, 'Next month? Next year. Next year? Next two months. Tomorrow? Three years.' And that process was four years, so it seems very present. That whole part was longer than actually shooting."

But shooting is now underway, and what was first announced as a 10-episode Netflix series has already seemingly expanded into something greater.

"I think it's going to be 13 episodes, not 10," said Cross. "There's too much story. Some characters will have two-parters. Everybody sort of participates, sometimes in a bigger way and sometimes in a tiny little thread that goes through everybody else's stories."

Cross' comments suggest that the originally pitched premise of character-centric episodes is still in play, though that's not yet confirmed. Regardless of the season's structure, Cross promised that fans will find themselves reunited with the same ludicrously complicated show that aired so many years ago.

"I'm not gonna divulge anything, but I know what the stories are and what Mitch [Hurwitz] is doing, and it's so layered," he said. "It's really audacious and amazing. I think a lot of people will miss the work that is involved, the story, the Venn diagrams that are being created, the domino effect that characters have with each other in their various episodes. I know what he's doing, and this has never been done on a TV show like this. This makes 'Lost' look like a Spaulding Grey monologue. You'll have to watch each episode more than once."