'Rick and Morty' season four release date confirmed

Rick and Morty will be returning for a fourth season in November of this year, the show's network Adult Swim has confirmed.

The announcement was made via the network's official Twitter page. The tweet included a video featuring the animated title characters, and was captioned: "We heard some of you were interested in this information."

Take a look at the season four video announcement, courtesy of Rick and Morty:

"We've got a big announcement to make!" Rick begins, before giving Morty the chance to make the announcement himself - an offer that the former's timid grandson turns down.

Instead, the mad scientist has the honour of sharing the exciting news.

"Rick and Morty is back," Rick proclaims. "Brand new season four in November 2019 - this year."

Last May, Adult Swim announced that the popular animated series would return for a fourth season and that they were planning to bring out 70 new episodes over the next few years. Fans of the series, which first aired back in 2013, waited for a release date, but it wasn't until earlier today that the date was finally announced.

In an interview with Polygon last June, co-creator Justin Roiland spoke of his excitement of writing more episodes for the show.

"We’re super excited that, for the first time ever, we’re locked in, we know what the future is, we have job security," Roiland said.

"Harmon is in great spirits, we have a great writers’ room. We want the episodes to stay good, but we do also want to try to turn them around a little quicker now that we have this big order, I think it gives us the ability to be faster.

We’re not going to do these long breaks, these chasms in between seasons anymore. We’re going to schedule vacation time and just keep the machine going. It’s going to be really cool."

Aside from the Twitter video announcement, news of a season four release date was also announced earlier today at the WarnerMedia upfront presentation in New York.

And it's a long time coming for ardent fans of the show who have been waiting about a year and a half for a new season, considering season three ended back in October 2017.