Here’s some good news for those sadists among you who froth on terrible things: Arrested Development will not premiere in Australia on May 29th, unlike almost literally everywhere else in the world.
While season 5 is set to hit Netflix elsewhere in the world on the 29th, here in Australia there is no set release date yet.
That’s because, even though the show is now technically a Netflix Original, the streaming service does not own the rights to screen its own show on its own platform first here the merry old land of Aus.
As it turns out, Foxtel owns the “first-run” rights to Arrested Development, meaning they’ve got dibs on screening it before Netflix does.
This is all thanks to a deal struck back in 2013, when Netflix wasn’t “officially” a thing out here, where streaming bosses struck a deal to get Season 4 legally on Australian screens, which it was gearing up to release at the time.
A lot’s bloody changed in the five years since then; Netflix finally poked its way into the Australian market, and brought with it a plethora of original content that it puts out simultaneously in all its operating territories. However, the 2013 deal for Arrested Development still stands.
Once Foxtel screens all the episodes of Season 5 in whatever manner it sees fit, then Netflix can unlock the content on its platforms for Australian users. But only then, and not a moment before.
School-based publisher StudentEdge first uncovered this wild little anomaly, confirming with Netflix that the service currently has no plans to release Arrested Development season 5 to Australian viewers on the 29th.
There’s no word on when Foxtel is keen to push the season out to viewers; it, unlike the rest of Australia, will have access to the entire season the moment it drops. When it does appear for Australian eyes to consume is anyone’s guess.
How bloody about that, then. Just when we thought we were out of agonisingly staggered release delays, they pull us back in.
Taste the sad, sports fans. Taste it.
