Dan Harmon’s dream of six seasons and a Community movie is getting closer to coming true, according to star Joel McHale. The Emmy nominee starred in the NBC sitcom as Jeff Winger, a former lawyer who is forced to attend the questionable Greendale Community College after being disbarred for claiming to have a bachelor’s degree. Though initially looking to skate by with cheating and minimal effort, Jeff finds himself growing into a different person as he becomes close with a Spanish study group he initially created to sleep with one member.
Alongside McHale, the main cast for Community included Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Yvette Nicole Brown, Alison Brie, Donald Glover, Ken Jeong, Chevy Chase and Jim Rash. Having premiered in late 2009, the series scored critical acclaim throughout most of its six-season run, save for the mixed-received season 4 that wasn’t run by Harmon after he was fired by NBC. Community has been credited with putting much of its talent in front of and behind the camera, including Harmon, who would go on to co-create Rick and Morty, as well as Brie and Glover.
In a recent interview with ComicBook.com, Joel McHale opened up about the long-gestating Community movie adaptation. The star offered a hopeful update on the film, confirming that studios are now interested in the project thanks to the show’s streaming success, but that there are still a number of moving elements for the project. See what McHale said below:
“I’m setting aside all the money to make [the movie] happen. Before when I’d answer the question, I’d be like, ‘Maybe, I have no idea.’ But now, with its success on the streamers during the pandemic, the interest has returned. I would say it’s more likely than it was before, definitely, but it’s like building an aircraft carrier. You go, ‘We’re gonna do this, right? Yeah, okay, everybody’s here, we got the money.’ Now, this thing has to actually get built. There’s a lot more than just ‘Hey, let’s make a movie now, great.’ It’s a lot of moving parts. So I’m more positive than I was, definitely, but we’ll see. That’s a terrible answer, but definitely better than my answer two years ago.”
Plans for a Community movie adaptation have been in the works since 2014 when the show first was canceled by NBC, with Harmon offering a variety of updates in the years since ranging from doubts of getting it produced to interest in making it happen. Most of the Community cast have confirmed their interest in coming back for a film, the idea of which became popularized in the show itself as Danny Pudi’s Abed frequently noted the concept of some TV shows getting six seasons and a movie to close out their story. Harmon even confirmed as recently as mid-2021 that the gears were turning on a story for the Community movie and that he had begun writing the script.
McHale’s new comments on the Community movie adaptation largely echo those he gave this past September, in which he confessed to having lied about its possibility for some time but that things were finally falling into place. As McHale notes, Community‘s cult following has only grown in the past two years since its debut on Netflix, where it has frequently sat in the Top 10 most popular shows and garnered a wider audience. While audiences await a proper confirmation on the film moving forward, they can catch up with all six seasons of Community streaming on Netflix now.
