Arrested Development’s long-teased 5th season is officially hitting Netflix in 2018

Arrested Development is officially no longer in … well, arrested development. Netflix announced today that it’s ordered a fifth season of Bluth insanity, to air in 2018.

“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,” said creator Mitch Hurwitz in a press release so dry you can practically hear it crackling.

Hurwitz continues, “I am so grateful to them and to 20th [Century Fox] 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.”

Arrested Development ran on Fox for three seasons from 2003 to 2006 before getting picked up by Netflix in 2013. That format-breaking fourth season — which hid jokes and callbacks in such a way that you couldn’t understand them without marathoning the entire thing — was controversial, but Hurwitz wasn’t deterred from the possibility of keeping the show going. In fact, once season four dropped on Netflix, he immediately teased that he was working on an Arrested Development movie.

A fifth season was reported as likely even a year ago, and details of its possible topics (namely Donald Trump and Making a Murderer) came out in January. But it took until now for the continuation to become official, probably due to the cast’s demanding schedules. (Star Jason Bateman, for example, reportedly closed in on a deal just last week.)

But all that is now in the past, with a new season confirmed for the future. It seems that until the cast and creative team run out of enthusiasm for the Bluth family’s increasingly chaotic adventures, there will always be more TV in the banana stand.

Will you join us?

Our biggest supporters are our readers — and we’re so grateful to everyone who has made a contribution during our September campaign. We’re less than 1,000 contributions away from reaching our goal for the month, which in turn will allow us to say yes more often when our incredible journalists come to us with questions they want to answer and projects they want to pursue. Will you make a contribution before the month ends and support our policy coverage through 2024 and beyond?

One-Time Monthly Annual

$5/month

$10/month

$25/month

$50/month

Other

$

Yes, I'll give $5/month

Yes, I'll give $5/month

We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. You can also contribute via