'Arrested Development' Season 5 Netflix Release Date Announced For 2016

Jun 03, 2015 07:26 PM EDT

The show Arrested Development has had an interesting history.  It has won Emmys, and many believe it is one of the best shows ever made, but it was cancelled after its third season.  Fortunately, cancellation is not forever for cult classic TV shows as it was revived on Netflix for a fourth season, and now Season 5 is happening.  Here's everything we know about the Netflix Season 5 Release Date for Arrested Development

According to E Online, more Arrested Development is coming to Netflix as executive producer Brian Grazer has stated that "we're going to do another 17 episodes".  Season 5 of Arrested Development is planning production around January or February 2016, with new episodes premiering about four months after that.  This makes Season 5 slated to appear in Spring or Summer of 2016. 

Arrested Development is a comedy of errors show narrated by Ron Howard about "a wealthy family who lost everything, and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together".  The wealthy family is the Bluth family who are into corrupt real estate deals, with parents of George (Jeffrey Tambor) and Lucille (Jessica Walter).  The one son is Michael (Jason Bateman) who is the straight man who takes over his father's company, attempting to save it while George is in jail or on the run.  In the process, Michael always ends up in situations as his siblings Gob (Will Arnett), Lindsay (Portia De Rossi), and Buster (Tony Hale) get into a lot of trouble.  Other characters include Michael's brother-in-law Tobias Funke (David Cross), his niece Maeby (Alia Shawkat), and his son, George Michael (Michael Cera). 

As stated before, Arrested Development has an unusual history as it began in 2003, and it was quite critically acclaimed.  The show developed a cult following, but was never able to achieve mainstream success like Seinfeld or Friends.  For Season 3, it looked bleak as the FOX Network ordered only 13 episodes, a half a season.  The last episode aired in February of 2006, but there was a promise of a possible movie. 

After years of rumors and talks, Season 4 of Arrested Development finally came about, and all of its 15 episodes were put on Netflix at the same time in the summer of 2013.  The storyline became even more complicated and convoluted as each episode focused primarily on one character, and the episodes can be watched in any order. 

The reason why Season 4 focused so much on individual characters was many of the actors on Arrested Development have had a lot more acting jobs because of it.  Therefore, it is difficult to get them in one room at any given time, so it was just easier to create a branching storyline and film around their schedules.  I would imagine that this was the problem with getting Season 5, but the show's clever comic writing is usually able to pull off a decent story for these very zany characters. 

Look for Arrested Development Season 5 in 2016.  In the meantime, Seasons 1-4 are available on Netflix if you haven't watched it and want to see what it is all about.