David Cross Says New Season Of 'Arrested Development' Could Expand To Thirteen Episodes; See Ron Howard's Set Photos

That Arrested Development is coming back at all after six years off the air is great news in itself, but now it sounds like we could be getting even more of the Bluths than we previously thought. No, it's not a movie (yet). In a recent interview, David Cross (a.k.a. Tobias Fünke) teased that the upcoming season could consist of thirteen episodes, rather than the ten that were previously announced.

Meanwhile, whatever the number of episodes, production appears to be chugging along nicely. Ron Howard has tweeted a couple more photos from the set. Check 'em out and read what Cross had to say after the jump.

I think it's going to be 13 episodes, not 10. 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.

One reason for Arrested Development's high rewatchability is its intricate plotting and subtle inside jokes — there's always something new to catch even if you've already gone through the series two or three times over. Cross assures fans that that won't have changed:

I'm not gonna divulge anything, but I know what the stories are and what Mitch [Hurwitz] is doing, and it's so layered. 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.

Sadly, it could be a bit of a wait to find out just what those fantastically complicated gags are. Arrested Development has yet to announce a release date, and at present we know only that the entire season will hit Netflix at the same time on an undetermined date in 2013.

For now, we've got narrator Howard's photos to look through while we wait. A couple that he tweeted late last night show the cast and crew on a bar-like set.