Time to start purging your liver, and warming up those pipes for your best “Steve Holt!” The return of Arrested Development is coming, and while we already knew the series will make a comeback with the entire Bluth clan in a 17-episode offering, series producer Brian Grazer’s loose lips just let fly new information about the slated return of the popular show.
Speaking on the Adam Corolla show on Tuesday, Grazer confirmed that the series would indeed return to Netflix with production to begin on January 1 of 2016, and a launch date set for “four months after that,” according to Time. Grazer has made a habit of spilling the beans about AD on podcasts, previously revealing information about the series’ fifth season during an interview on the B.S. Report podcast. The original show, which ran for three seasons before heading to Netflix for its fourth, was produced by 20th Century Fox and Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment.
It was clear from both fans and cast that Netflix made the right move by resurrecting the series two years ago, even though a full seven years had passed since it was last seen on TV. There were 15 episodes in all, but series creator Mitchell Hurwitz said at the time that the run was just the beginning of the reincarnation of the series.
Hurwitz signed a multi-year deal with Netflix last year, which all but confirmed the streaming platform would remain home to the next 17 episodes. The show started its initial three-season run on Fox back in 2003.
For those uninitiated, Arrested Development followed the highly dysfunctional and eccentric Bluth family, which includes heavyweight actors like Jeffrey Tambor, who is now leading another OTT streaming service with the Amazon original series Transparent; comeback child-actor extraordinaire Jason Bateman, who plays the central character Michael Bluth; Michael Cera as Bateman’s son George Michael (cue laughs); Jessica Walter, the matriarch; Tony Hale as Buster, the youngest of the family; Will Arnett, as the older brother Gob; and Portia de Rossi as Michael’s spoiled younger sister.
While we already knew season 5 was underway, fans should be delighted to hear that the dates have been set, and the series will once again hit the Web next year.
Updated 6/3/2015 by Ryan Waniata: This piece has been updated to add new information about the series premiere and production dates coming in 2016.
