Arrested Development cast will have much more time together in season 5

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

After much wrangling of the schedules, a fifth season of Arrested Development was officially greenlit two weeks ago and will find all of the regular cast-members returning, including Jason Bateman, Portia de Rossi, Will Arnett, Michael Cera, Alia Shawkat,Tony Hale, David Cross, Jeffrey Tambor and Jessica Walter. Quite impressive, but where did the lighter fluid come from? One of the common criticisms lobbed at the fourth season of Arrested Development was that too much time was spent on following the stories of the individual characters and not enough on the Bluth family as a whole. As much of the Arrested Development cast have grown increasingly busy since the series' cancellation, this was a necessary evil at the time, but thankfully the upcoming fifth season will apparently be structured more like the original broadcast series.

Will Arnett, who plays Gob Bluth in the series, told Business Insider that the cast will be spending "much more" time together in the new season. Although the fractured fourth season has certainly grown on me over the years, it will be great to see the amazing Arrested Development cast back together as an ensemble. "It's an opportunity to see everyone else," said Arnett. "It will be very rewarding."

In a previous statement, Arrested Development creator Mitchell Hurwitz said:

In talks with Netflix we all felt that 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. I am so grateful to them and to 20th 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.

The fifth season of Arrested Development will begin filming this summer and is expected to debut on Netflix in 2018.