Community Creator Dan Harmon Says Writers Strike Was 'A Blessing' For The Movie

For a lot of "Community" fans, 2023 has been a stressful year. Since 2022's announcement that a "Community" movie was finally in the works, Hollywood experienced a historic dual strike of actors and writers that threw everything back in the air again. A big reason for why the movie took so long to be greenlit in the first place was because of how difficult it was to get every cast member available around the same time, so a lot of fans have worried that the strikes would kill the production before it could truly begin. Luckily, creator Dan Harmon's made it clear that things are still moving forward. In fact, the strike may have actually helped the project rather than hurting it.

"[Before the strikes] we had a draft of a script that was theoretically ready to go. I don't think creatively it was all the way there, which is why I was starting to panic about us being scheduled to start shooting," Harmon told the Associated Press. The script was reportedly "nearly done" back in June this year, with shooting scheduled to take place during the summer, but... 

"Then the [writers] strike happened. I do think it was a huge blessing for this particular project because it shut everything down long enough for us to ... When we got back to rewriting that script, which we're almost through the process of now, we had so much more clarity than if we had been taking that thing to the set [in June] and starting to shoot it."

In addition to the more polished script, Harmon also shed some more light on what his intentions are for the "Community" movie, saying, "It's designed absolutely backwards from the goal of letting everybody, new and old fans, just feel like things are complete." He also threw in a mention of a possible reboot of the series if audiences like the movie enough, although it's clear from his tone that fans definitely shouldn't expect a series reboot or recontinuation any time soon. 

This update helps to reaffirm Harmon's earlier statements that the "Community" movie won't just be about cheap fan service. In previous interviews and press conferences, he's confirmed that it won't be centered around a paintball fight, as many fans have speculated, nor will it play out like the show's many extended film homages over the years. He's also announced that he hired Andrew Guest as a co-writer, the guy responsible for penning beloved episodes like "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons," "A Fistful of Paintballs," and "Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples." In other words, the movie will probably be more about capturing the tone of season 2 than season 6.

So although the wait for the "Community" movie might be longer than we'd have preferred, fans can at least take solace in the fact that things look promising so far. "We've come upon the right story in the right format of the movie," Harmon said. "It's going to be great. It's going to be something to be really proud of."