Glory be! After seven long and miserable years without a new Arrested Development episode, Netflix has confirmed on Twitter that the cult comedy series will be back for 14 episodes on the video-streaming platform in May.
Though reports have pinned the release date as May 4, Netflix’s content chief Ted Sarandos didn’t confirm an actual date, but he did say that all 14 episodes would roll out at once.
Despite receiving plenty of critical acclaim, Arrested Development was pulled off the air in 2006 after just three seasons thanks to the Fox network’s troubling fixation with piddling matters like viewership ratings. In an article last year for The Guardian, show creator Mitch Hurwitz also offered further (tongue-in-cheek) insight into why the show was cancelled, including its lack of “fast cars and exciting vehicles,” omission of a laugh track and the “sprinkle of incest” that showed up in almost every episode (intriguingly enough, all these factors have helped make Game of Thrones a wild success).
During a recent press junket, star Jason Bateman said that the new season is “something completely different on purpose, per the format Netflix affords us and the larger story we can do.” Though all 14 episodes will be released at once, Hurwitz recommends that they be watched in a certain order: “It’s like an album. There is an order that we have put together to create the maximum number of surprises just in time for all the fathers for Fathers Day.”
Some fans are already fretting that if the new season falls flat, it will tarnish the show’s legacy. But of course it won’t. This is Arrested Development, after all, and there will be nudity. Further good news for Arrested Development fans: a movie might be in the works and Bateman said it’s a possibility a feature would be released on Netflix.
Arrested Development’s new season comes at a good time for Netflix, as the company seeks to shore up its offerings with more original programming in order to ward off increasing competition from Amazon Prime Instant Video.