Fans who were disappointed when Arrested Development was taken off the air in 2006 will be pleased to hear that the series is finally resurfacing and has a release date.  Season four of Arrested Development isn’t reappearing on a TV network, though.  Instead, it will go straight to Netflix instant streaming on May 26.

When the sitcom was originally canceled by Fox, creator Mitchell Hurwitz didn’t move it to a cable network because he didn’t see a future for the show at the time.  Over the years Hurwitz has considered making an Arrested Development movie, but those plans never went through.  In late 2011, Hurwitz got together with the original actors from the series and began planning for a fourth season, which was shot throughout 2012.  Considering that old episodes of Arrested Development make the series one of the top streamed TV shows on Netflix, there is no doubt the new season is highly anticipated.

All of the old familiar faces will be back for season four, including Portia de Rossi, Jason Bateman, Michael Cera and Will Arnett.  Ron Howard will also return as the narrator of the series, but isn’t listed as an executive producer as he was during the first three seasons.  There isn’t yet any information about exactly where the show will pick up or what kind of timeline fans can expect.

Rather than offer up one episode per week as is the norm for network TV shows, Netflix will offer all fifteen new episodes at once.  The die-hard fans who have been waiting for this show to make its comeback all this time can have an all-day Arrested Development marathon, or they can take it an episode at a time.  Hurwitz is pleased with the ability to stream all episodes at once and said, “In truth we are doing something very ambitious that can only be done with Netflix as partners and on their platform.”  

Streaming original content is nothing new to Netflix, although this is the first time the video rental/streaming company has brought a previously canceled series back to life.  Netflix currently has three original series available to stream and has plans to introduce several new series in the future.  Offering up the former Emmy Award winning Arrested Development will certainly help shed light on the original programming offered by Netflix and just might help make the company more competitive with other streaming services such as Amazon Instant Video and Vudu.