Entertainment
The ‘Community’ Movie Has One Thing Most Revivals Don’t, and Its Latest Update Hints It’s Still There
In the second half of Community‘s original run on NBC, “Six Seasons and a Movie” became not only the mantra of the show’s fans, but also the series itself. The phrase was both a goal and a promise, to tell the story of Greendale Community College’s most infamous study group over the course of six TV seasons and a feature film. Against all odds (and with a little help from Yahoo’s short-live streaming venture), we got the six seasons, and now we’re just waiting for the movie.
Peacock announced Community: The Movie a couple of years ago, and it was due to begin production after the SAG and WGA strikes, Unfortunately, that production start never happened, and fans are still waiting to see if the film will actually come to fruition. What we know now, though, is that the post-strikes delay was due to one key member of the cast having a conflict, and Community remains committed to keeping the entire ensemble together. In other words, the Community movie knows exactly what it needs to be, and nobody is settling for less.
The delays that have plagued Community‘s movie have undoubtedly been frustrating, but there is definitely a silver lining to the entire situation: Dan Harmon and his creative cohorts know that the cast needs to be together for this to work. Community writer Andrew Guest recently appeared on a new episode of The Watch podcast and confirmed that the movie was “close to shooting” after the strikes in 2023, but one cast member had a conflict that would’ve kept them from having their intended role. Rather than changing anything in the script to make a deadline, the entire movie was pushed to make sure everyone could be a part of it.
Community’s razor-sharp, years-ahead-of-its-time writing is a big reason the show has left such a lasting mark on its fans, but the biggest reason is absolutely the show’s perfect ensemble. Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Alison Brie, Yvette Nicole Brown, Ken Jeong, Jim Rash, and Donald Glover all need to have substantial parts to play in the film for it to actually be a worthwhile continuation of the series. Based on what Guest had to say, it sounds like that remains the goal.
Keeping the Study Group Together
The first three seasons of Community featured the entire core cast on a consistent basis, with Chevy Chase rounding out the aforementioned list of stars. Chase was written out of the show entirely, Glover’s Troy was sent off to another college in Season 5, and Brown only made a few appearances in Season 6. Chase’s character exit made sense, but the breaking up of the group beyond Pierce left a void with fans that the show tried a few different ways to fill.
No offense to anyone who came into the show in Seasons 5 and 6, because many of them did a great job helping Community stay quirky and fresh. Keith David and Paget Brewster did an particularly solid job aiding Community across the finish line. But no matter how good they were, the study group never felt the same without Troy and Shirley.
The duo of Troy and Abed is especially important to making the Community movie work. There have been rumblings that the script is about a Greendale reunion and Abed trying to put a film together about their lives. In what world would Abed make a movie about Greendale without Troy being a part of it? There has been no word about Glover’s schedule being an issue or anything like that; this is simply one example of the dynamics of the study group that can be thrown off if everyone isn’t back together.
Community is exactly as its title implies, it’s about the sum being a wonderful culmination of its eccentric parts. It’s refreshing to know that, unlike many other reboots and revivals, the Community creative team isn’t satisfied with anything less than what made it special in the first place.
- Release Date
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2009 – 2015-00-00
- Network
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NBC, Yahoo! Screen
- Showrunner
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Dan Harmon
- Directors
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Tristram Shapeero, Joe Russo, Anthony Russo, Rob Schrab, Jay Chandrasekhar, Adam Davidson, Justin Lin, Steven K. Tsuchida, Kyle Newacheck, Victor Nelli Jr., Nat Faxon, Michael Patrick Jann, Anthony Hemingway, Ken Whittingham, Steven Sprung, Tricia Brock, Jeff Melman, Gail Mancuso, Duke Johnson, Fred Goss, Bobcat Goldthwait, Richard Ayoade, Seth Gordon, Beth McCarthy-Miller
- Writers
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Chris McKenna, Hilary Winston, Andrew Guest, Tim Hobert, Karey Dornetto, Stephen Basilone, Emily Cutler, Annie Mebane, Alex Rubens, Tim Saccardo, Paul Isakson, David Seger, Maggie Bandur, Monica Padrick, Matt Murray, Liz Cackowski, Lauren Pomerantz, Dan Guterman, Matt Roller, Ryan Ridley, Carol Kolb, Jon Pollack, Dino Stamatopoulos, Donald Diego