As long as this is closer to Pee Wee’s Big Adventure and a decided departure from 1988’s ill fated Big Top Pee-Wee I think we’ll be in fairly decent shape. Paul Reubens is claiming that an official announcement regarding a new Pee-Wee Herman movie is almost incredibly f*cking nigh. This is excellent news considering the fact that it’s been well over two years since our last update on the project. Given the fact that Reubens sounded optimistic then (though not quite this optimistic), let’s hope there’s a bit more going on than last time around.

There’s no word on if Judd Apatow is still involved or if they are using any of the script that he worked on, but I’m hoping there’s a strong steward aboard either way because I don’t want my Pee-Wee ship sailing rudderless. Hit the jump for more on the new Pee-Wee Herman movie.

Reubens told Rolling Stone:

“There’s going to be a big announcement any minute now. Yes. It’s been months and months of being right on the verge of being announced…I thought something was going to go public yesterday, actually, and that you’d be the first person I’d be talking about this with. But I’m thinking there will be something made public very soon. It’s going to get made shortly after the new year. I wish I could tell you about it right now, because…I mean, it’s amazing. It’s going to be amazing. It think it first got leaked four years ago or so that the movie was going to be made, and ever since then it’s just been stalling and stalling. So I’m really ready for this to happen. But I’m not kidding: It’s very imminent.”

I wouldn’t hold my breath for Tim Burton‘s return, but hey, stranger things have happened. He came back to familiar ground for the (underrated) Frankenweenie after all.