For those who have been closely following the progress of the new Arrested Development episodes on Netflix, the following probably won’t come as too big a shock, but it has been confirmed that upcoming fourth season of the show will be the only batch of new episodes produced for the streaming giant.  The formulation of this new season was a herculean task of scheduling given the series’ large ensemble cast, but somehow creator Mitch Hurwitz pulled it off and fans are keeping their fingers crossed that the upcoming fourth season lives up to the incredibly high expectations.

Hit the jump for more on why Netflix is only producing one season of the series and how the upcoming episodes fit into the overall plan for Arrested Development’s resurrection. 

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Speaking with the Wall Street Journal (via /Film), Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said that the new batch of Arrested Development episodes was a “one-off” that came under “non-repeatable circumstances,” noting that it would be “extremely difficult to get the cast together” for another go-around.  Even with each episode centering around one specific character, scheduling was still incredibly tough to work out given that the show’s actors are all now (deservingly) quite in-demand and had other commitments to juggle.

Though we likely won’t see Arrested Development’s story continue in a TV-style iteration following the upcoming string of Netflix episodes, star Jason Bateman recently clarified to Empire that the plan is to wrap the story up with the long-promised feature film:

“[The Netflix episodes will be] the first third of a three part story -- the second two parts will be in the movie. So this is the first act, and the movie is act two and three. They're all just asking questions that the movie itself will answer."

All 13 episodes of Arrested Development season four will be available on Netflix in May.

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