Jason Bateman
Photo: MTV News

"Arrested Development" wrapped up its Emmy-winning, ratings-challenged three-season run in February 2006. More than three and a half years later, the "Will they or won't they?" chatter about a big-screen turn for the dysfunctional Bluth family rages on in the absence, it seems, of any real news.

Well, enough time has passed that even the man behind the show's central player — frazzled and frustrated Michael Bluth — is starting to think that the time for an "Arrested" movie has come and gone.

"Perhaps that ship has sailed," Jason Bateman told MTV News at the Toronto International Film Festival while promoting the George Clooney-starring "Up in the Air."

Bateman's cautious declaration is the latest in a year's long string of cast statements about the "Arrested" film stretching back to the Sundance Film Festival in January, when Michael Cera (George Michael Bluth, the most awkward of awkward teens) cast doubt on the notion that the project would move forward. Since then the show's big players, like executive producer Ron Howard, Will Arnett (George "Gob" Bluth), David Cross (Tobias Fünke) and Tony Hale (Buster Bluth) have all chimed in with various takes on the likelihood of getting "Arrested" into the cinema.

It's all gotten so confusing that even Bateman isn't exactly sure what's going on. Just moments after saying that the ship has sailed, he said that series creator Mitch Hurwitz is actually knee-deep in the "Arrested" writing process.

"[Mitch] just had a very busy television season," Bateman said. "Now that that has finished, he's intensely writing the movie. My guess is he's halfway done with it. My guess is we'd be shooting it in eight, nine, 10 months and then it would be out six or seven months later."

Wait, did Bateman just tell us we'll see the movie in a year and a half at most? We'll have to wait and see. Until then, we'll continue to harass the cast for any sort of update. In fact, just hours after his MTV News interview, we ran into Bateman again, this time during the red-carpet premiere for "Up in the Air."

"Any new development on 'Arrested' to tell us about?" we laughed.