Fox
More than five years ago, executives at Netflix realized there’s always money in the inability of television networks to realize the treasure they’re sitting on when they announced they’d be producing a fourth season of Arrested Development, one of the smartest comedies ever written. The show was essentially left for dead after it was canceled by Fox back in 2006, so its notably cultish fans were thrilled to hear about its resurrection on a platform known for its hands-off approach.
Unfortunately, not everyone was thrilled with the show’s most recent season. Writers and producers were forced to accommodate the shooting schedules of actors working on other projects, and the lack of interaction between core characters resulted in a season that lacked the chemistry of the original three. At least we got some Carl Weathers out of it.
Last year, we learned it was only a matter of time before shooting started on the fifth season of the show, and it looks like the crew has learned from their previous mistakes. On Tuesday, the show’s creator Mitch Hurwitz came out of the clouds and gifted Arrested Development fans some absolutely incredible news— the most notable of which is probably the fact that we might be getting the new season sooner than anyone could have imagined.
On the next… Arrested Development pic.twitter.com/NjP26k9KE7
— Arrested Development (@arresteddev) May 1, 2018
Contract negotiations were still underway when executives started discussing the fifth season last year, but if Hurwitz’s message is any indication, they managed to figure out a way to bang out a bunch of new episodes in an impressively short amount of time while keeping things on the down low. There’s no concrete date set for the premiere, but I wouldn’t be shocked to see it hit the platform before Memorial Day rolls around based on his wording.
If you’re still working on getting out any bad taste season four of Arrested Development might have left in your mouth, Hurwitz also announced that he’d remixed those episodes so they play more like the original ones, going in chronological order instead of following a specific character. The newly edited version will hit Netflix on May 4 (AKA Cinco De Quatro, the best made-up holiday since Festivus).