Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard having a laugh on the red carpet
Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard having a laugh on the red carpet Reuters

Kristen Bell is still holding out hope for a movie adaptation of "Veronica Mars" despite legal obstacles in the way, she told Vulture in an interview on Wednesday. Although she hasn't offered fans any concrete developments yet, the actress indicated during interviews to promote her latest film "Hit and Run," with boyfriend Dax Sheppard, that she's still pushing to make a film based on the TV show about a teenager who begins helping out with her father's private investigation business after her best friend is murdered.

The neo-noir crime series, which aired for 3 seasons on the UPN and before moving to The CW, continues to have a cult following 5 years after its cancellation. And according to numerous reports from Bell, both she and series creator Rob Thomas are enthusiastic about adding to the "Mars" storyline with another project that would tie up loose ends.

"Everyone involved wants to do it, but Warner Bros. is a real stinker," said Bell. "It's a real monster of a legal system there."

"If I had the money right now to produce it, I would do it in a heartbeat," added the 32-year-old actress. "I still have hope for it. I really do. Even if she's, like, 80 when it takes place, like Murder, She Wrote."

The "Veronica Mars" series left off when Bell's title character was a freshman at "Hearst College," but a 12-minute trailer that Thomas filmed as a pitch for a 4th season of the show still exists, featuring a post-college Mars as an F.B.I. agent, and gives fans an idea of where the series might have been headed. The video, which was bundled with the DVD package for season 3, has also sparked rumors that a "Mars" movie would skip college and be based on her career in the F.B.I.

But in spite of Bell and Thomas's insistence that "Veronica Mars" fans shouldn't lose hope, the odds don't currently seem to be in their favor. According to Bell, who offered to finance the film herself last year, Warner Brothers is not currently open to turning the series into a movie, or of letting go of the rights to "Veronica Mars."

"At this point, Warner Bros. can make it but like any studio they have research that tells them whether or not they'll make their money back," Bell told The Hollywood Reporter, in 2010. "And that's what we've been told: that [the money's] just not there. So my duty, because I wanted this movie made from the minute our show got canceled, is to a. do it before I'm 40, and b. to prove to Warner Bros. that there is an audience."

But lately, Bell has sounded a bit more optimistic. "If I have my choice, there will be [a movie], and it will be before I am in a nursing home I'm telling you, if I have any control over it," Bell said in an interview with Ryan Seacrest on Tuesday.

View the videos below to watch the unaired trailer for a 4th season of "Veronica Mars."