All episodes of “Arrested Development” are set to be removed from Netflix on March 15 — including Seasons 4 and 5, which Netflix produced itself.
After initially running on Fox for three seasons, “Arrested Development” was canceled in 2006. In 2012, when Netflix was still relatively new to producing its own projects, the streamer elected to revive the series. Co-produced with 20th Television and Imagine Entertainment, Season 4 premiered in 2013 and the fifth and final seasons premiered in two installments between 2018 and 2019.
While the “Arrested Development” landing page on Netflix is already alerting viewers that March 14 is the last day to watch the series, that still seems to be subject to change. Norwegian crime drama “Lilyhammer,” which was billed as the first-ever Netflix original, was announced to be leaving the service last year, but a licensing renewal at the last hour allowed the series to continue streaming. But if the removal of “Arrested Development does go through,” it will be one of the few times Netflix has scrubbed its own original content, which has previously occurred with other series co-owned by outside studios. With Marvel series such as “Daredevil” and “Jessica Jones” for example, Disney opted not to renew their licensing deals since it had recently launched Disney+.
When Netflix revived “Arrested Development,” it also secured non-exclusive streaming rights to the first three seasons. Those seasons also currently stream on Hulu, which, like 20th Television, is owned by Disney.
Created by Mitchell Hurwitz, “Arrested Development” starred Jason Bateman, Jeffrey Tambor, Michael Cera, Jessica Walter, Will Arnett, Tony Hale, Portia de Rossi and Alia Shawkat. Hurwitz executive produced with Brian Grazer, Ron Howard, David Nevins, Jim Vallely and Troy Miller.
From Variety US