Seven years after its final season aired, Community is finally getting the movie it’s always aimed for. The project was announced on the show’s Twitter account, with star Joel McHale and NBC’s Peacock accounts confirming it was all real. The Community movie will stream on Peacock when it’s released.
Community was created by Dan Harmon and started airing on NBC in 2009. Harmon was fired from the show after its third season, which gave season 4 a very different feel, and even led to the characters breaking the fourth wall and calling it “the gas leak year.” (Harmon was later re-hired for season 5 of Community.)
The series reached cult-favorite status among its die-hard fans, but rarely, if ever, was it a ratings smash, which made its renewal an open question each year. Community’s writers and cast even justified the show’s renewal with a joke made in season 2, episode 21, when Abed Nadir declared that “six seasons and a movie” was the perfect lifespan for a TV show. (The punchline became a meme and social media hashtag.) Community eventually made it to six seasons, but only after it was canceled on NBC and revived on Yahoo!’s short-lived streaming service, Yahoo! Screen.
One open question about this reunion movie is who, from the original cast, might actually return for it. According to Peacock’s announcement, Joel McHale, Danny Pudi, Alison Brie, Gillian Jacos, Jim Rash, and Ken Jeong are all set to return, with Dan Harmon back to write. For now, Donald Glover and Yvette Nicole Brown are not confirmed to return; it’s also unclear if Chevy Chase will come back, though he left the show before season 5, reportedly due to frequent on-set arguments with other actors and crew.
Twitter
Harmonic
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Dan Harmon
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Alison Brie
Danny Pudi
Joel Machale
Jim Rash
Yvette Nicole Brown