Original reporting by Melissa Miller.
The prophecy foretold six seasons and a movie, and now that will come to pass. The Community movie is coming to Peacock! Thanks to a tweet from series star Joel McHale and a report in Variety, we finally know it’s happening. We also know that series creator Dan Harmon will write and produce the movie. However, with the ongoing writers’ strike, things were on hold for a while. McHale revealed to Variety that Harmon and co-writer Andrew Guest were almost done with the script and had a director in mind before everything came on a halt in May. Harmon, McHale and other members of the WGA were on strike because the union did not reach a new contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) over many issues, including streaming residuals. Here’s what McHale had to say about it all.
“We had a shooting date coming up, which was going to be in the summer,” said McHale. “And I think they were extremely close to—I mean, Dan is somebody that tweaks things but, obviously, that’s all stopped. But I think it was pretty darn close. It was close, the shoot date was coming up and we were all excited to do it and then the writers strike happened, which obviously put everything on hold, and rightfully so. The writers are asking for very reasonable things. Writers need to be paid properly.”
Of course, we all want a Community movie, but we completely agree with Joel McHale. Our favorite shows and films cannot exist with out writers. And we want writers to receive the equitable pay and fair working conditions and contracts that they deserve.
Casting news isn’t official, but McHale tagged fellow stars Alison Brie, Donald Glover, Yvette Nicole Brown, Danny Pudi, and Ken Jeong in his post, as well as Gillian Anderson (but we assume he meant to tag Gillian Jacobs, who played Britta). The series finale gave our beloved characters a nudge towards their next steps in life, but we’ll be perfectly happy to see them all back together at Greendale Community College. Three cheers for the Community movie.
The show fulfilled half of Abed’s prophecy of “six seasons and a movie” with a final season on Yahoo! after five seasons on NBC. Its 110 episodes, all named like community college course titles, that mostly hit the mark of comedic and meta, takes on adult friendships. We cheered for the tight-knit study group through all the years of puppets, paintball, and pillow forts.
Community gained new popularity, and talk of the movie heated up when the show landed on Netflix in 2020. But it’s been part of the show’s lexicon since long before the series finale in 2015. It’s always a fun rewatch, and it’s never too late to watch the series for the first time.
We can’t wait to hear official casting news for the Community movie. Will we finally learn what happened to Troy Barnes after he sailed off with LeVar Burton and was never heard from again? Donald Glover did join in when the cast reunited for a virtual table read in the early days of the pandemic. Happily, Dan Harmon has confirmed Glover would return for the movie. Glover himself also recently told The Hollywood Reporter he was still planning on the Community movie, saying:
Yeah, [Dan Harmon] told me what he wanted, and I was like, “This sounds great.” It’s a college reunion, but Abed [Danny Pudi’s character] is like this big director now, and basically this is his magnum opus. I’m like, “This sounds f------ tight.”
Maybe we’re not living in Abed’s darkest timeline after all.
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