Netflix Will Not Order Fifth Season of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

Even though the upcoming fourth season of ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT hasn't premiered on Netflix yet, the company has made the decision not to order a fifth season, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

Netflix's CEO Reed Hastings confirmed the news in a conference call with investors today.

"Arrested is a unique property, we don't anticipate being able to do season five, six and seven," Hastings said. "We have less of a stake in it. It is really a fantastic one-off, which is coming together incredibly. I think it will be amazing for us, but think of it as a nonrepeatable amazing, whereas the other thing that we are doing is to trying to figure out a real mechanism where we can build shows and develop franchises over the long term. In that way, Arrested Development is a wildly successful tactic, as opposed to fundamental to the strategy."

Series star Jason Bateman also recently spoke of the proposed film version, though it remains to be seen if the plans will actually come to fruition.

"There's a big story that the showrunner wants to tell - this guy Mitch Hurwitz, this smart guy. And the story was too big...every time he'd try to fit it all in one movie, it wouldn't work," Bateman told Larry King in a recent interview. "So he decided to put sort of the first third of it in these episodes we have shot that are going be on Netflix in May - and Act 2 and Act 3 will be inside a movie that we will do later."

Netflix commissioned a fourth season of Hurwitz's ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT in early 2012, securing original cast members and an all-star lineup of guest stars including ConanO'Brien and Liza Minnelli.

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT centers around Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) and his eccentric family comprised of his son George Michael (Michael Cera), his father George Bluth Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor), his mother Lucille (Jessica Walter), his brothers George Oscar Bluth II (Will Arnett), Buster Bluth (Tony Hale) and sister Lindsay Funke (PORTIA DE ROSSI), and Lindsay's husband Tobias (David Cross) and their daughter Maeby (Alia Shawkat).

The 14-episode fourth season is set to premiere this May on Netflix.

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