'Community' Movie Supported By Cast, Dan Harmon Is Less Certain
Community always played the long game with its jokes, but there's one joke that it was never able to make good on. After the throwaway joke of "Six seasons and a movie!" became a rallying cry for the twice-cancelled comedy, fans have long wished for the feature film that would reunite the misfit study group and fulfill that mantra. It's an idea that creator Dan Harmon has played with, and which the stars have supported, though it seems less likely as we get further away from Community's cult-show heyday. But four years after Community wrapped up its six-season run, we're getting rumblings about a Community movie once again.
Dan Harmon and executive producer/writer Chris McKenna reunited with the cast of Community at the Vulture Festival LA panel this week, with cast members Joel McHale, Alison Brie, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Jim Rash, Yvette Nicole Brown, and Ken Jeong joining in on the "reunion" event. But with almost the entire cast back together on stage, the question naturally turned to whether we we could see this reunion on the screen.
The constant rumors about a Community movie has become "a weird Ouija board thing," Harmon said, according to Deadline. "Who is supposed to say, 'everyone do this'? That's what I've always said. I don't know how it starts."
"I think it starts with you, Dan," Brie replied.
Despite the vocal support from the cast onstage, who agreed that they would do the movie if asked to return — even though McHale cracked a joke about the salary he would require — Harmon seemed unconvinced:
"Yeah, then I write it and half the people are like, 'meh, I don't want to do it.'"
But Brown seemed to be intent to leave the door open, replying, "I just would love to have everybody back again. It was a lot of long hours, but we had a lot of fun. It's a family, so that would be fun."
Harmon is currently busy with his latest cult comedy show, Rick and Morty, an animated series that has been plagued with delays due to the unorthodox working style of Harmon and co-creator Justin Roiland. As sharp and ingenious a comedy writer as Harmon is, I don't see him being able to focus his energies on a feature film at the moment. But it is nice to know that the possibility of a Community movie is still there, maybe a few more years down the line. After all, if they could pull off a seasons-long Beetlejuice joke, they could pull off "six seasons and a movie."