Pee-wee Herman Returns! With Judd Apatow! With a New Film for Netflix!

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If you noticed that Pee-wee Herman has a load of titles that became available on Netflix earlier this month, it's not merely a move powered by nostalgia. It's been announced that Paul Reubens' character will have a new adventure that Netflix will stream sometime in 2016. The JuddApatow-produced film will begin shooting in Spring 2015.

A new Pee-wee film had been discussed fora few years. Universal began kicking the tires, but eventually it let too much time pass without a decision, and the Apatow-shepherded movie has now made its way to Netflix. In November, Reubens held this information close to his vest, though his heart was apparently bursting with excitement: "We now have such an amazing company involved, and that's the really big announcement that hasn't been made yet," he told the AV Club. The Pee-wee-Netflix union makes sense: although 2015 will be the 30-year anniversary of Tim Burton's Pee-wee's Big Adventure (Pee-wee's first film), and while there is a strong fan base that's returned for a few TV specials over the years, it has been more than 25-years since the last theatrical Pee-wee movie (Pee-wee's Big Top). So, a big theatrical movie at this juncture would've been a gamble. But Netflix, that aforementioned "amazing company", has spent pretty handsomely on its own television shows, and they should give Pee-wee his first proper movie sheen in decades.

There is no director slated yet, and Reubens hasn't revealed any script details (which Reubens co-wrote with Paul Rust who contributed to The Pee-wee Herman Show on Broadway, Netflix's Arrested Development and the upcoming Apatow-Netflix produced comedy, Love), but Netflix has added almost the entire back catalog to their platform. More announcements should be on the way.

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