Arrested Development is coming back for its long-awaited fifth season, according to a press statement from Netflix. The entire cast of the original series is currently slated to return.
Arrested Development is officially returning to Netflix for a fifth season
‘There’s always money in the banana stand!’
‘There’s always money in the banana stand!’
Image: Netflix
In interviews, the show’s cast has generally indicated their openness to doing more of the show, and over the weekend, Jason Bateman officially signed on for the fifth season. The rest of the cast is also expected to revisit their roles, including Will Arnett, Michael Cera, David Cross, Tony Hale, Portia de Rossi, Jeffrey Tambor, Alia Shawkat, and Jessica Walter. Ron Howard will also return to narrate the show. This new season will hopefully pick up from last season’s cliffhanger, in which George Michael (Cera) and his father Michael (Bateman) come to blows over a mutual love interest, Gob (Arnett) is promoted to president of the family’s company, and Buster (Hale) is arrested for the murder of Lucille Austero (Liza Minnelli).
In a press statement, Hurwitz said he felt the show is currently timely. “In talks with Netflix, we all felt that stories about a narcissistic, erratically behaving family in the building business — and their desperate abuses of power — are really underrepresented on TV these days.”
He went on to say “I am so grateful to them and to 20th TV for making this dream of mine come true in bringing the Bluths, George Sr., Lucille and the kids; Michael, Ivanka, Don Jr., Eric, George-Michael, and who am I forgetting, oh Tiffany. Did I say Tiffany? — back to the glorious stream of life.”
The show originally aired on Fox between 2004 and 2006, and while it was a critical darling, it never garnered a huge audience. Netflix picked up the sitcom for a fourth season in 2013, but restructured the show. Its 15 episodes were longer than the broadcast episodes, they overlapped in time, and each one followed a different character. The structure — intended to compensate for the difficulty of getting the celebrity cast together at the same time — was poorly received by fans, and Mitch Hurwitz, the show’s creator, ended up recutting the entire season to follow a traditional season of 22, 20-minute episodes. It’s not yet clear whether Netflix will air this new cut. Nothing has been said about whether this new season will follow the model of earlier seasons, or continue to experiment with format. The new season is expected to be released in 2018.
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