It’s been a greedy kind of joy to even imagine any amount of new Arrested Development beyond Netflix’s forthcoming fourteen episodes. But as of today, all hopes can be redirected straight to “four seasons and a movie” territory. “We don’t anticipate being able to do seasons five, six, seven. We have less of a stake in it,” said Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. “Arrested Development is a wildly successful tactic as opposed to fundamental to the strategy.” He also referred to the new batch of episodes as a “fantastic one-off” that came together through “non-repeatable” circumstances. A Netflix spokesperson added it would be “extremely difficult to get the cast together.” Series creator Mitch Hurwitz told Vulture in September, “The episodes are an outgrowth of the design of what we hope will be the movie. They precede it. They function as an act one of a movie that we all want to do, but haven’t ‘sold’ yet.” While at least one more new season (act two?) had seemed like a possibility, maybe the movie has been the next step all along and this is just confirmation. Still, if you won’t hear and won’t respond to this news, we get it.
