Joel McHale Offers Update on Community Movie

Shooting should start in 2025 on the long-awaited follow-up to Community (and no, the delays aren't Donald Glover's fault).

By Russ Burlingame

It's been over a year since Peacock's Community movie was finally announced, ending years of rumors and exciting fans of the groundbreaking sitcom. Unfortunately for those same fans, production on the movie still hasn't started, but series lead Joel McHale promises it's happening "vaguely" in 2025. It comes in an interview he gave for his appearance on The Bear -- a job he got, in part, because he met showrunner Chris Storer through Community's Gillian Jacobs back when the show was still on the air and Storer wasn't famous. Given that the cult success of Community has led to busy careers for numerous actors who appeared in it, the answer to any question about delays always seems to boil down to scheduling.

McHale also disputed recent claims that the delay was the fault of Donald Glover. The superstar musician and Atlanta producer and star left Community in the series' fifth season, but has committed to appearing in the movie.

community-movie.jpg
(Photo:

Jim Rash, Danny Pudi, Gillian Jacobs, Joel McHale, Ken Jeong, and Alison Brie in season six of Community.

- NBCUniversal)

"If it's anybody's fault, it's my schedule on this one. It's not his at all. He was available," McHale told GQ. When reminded of the reports blaming Glover for the delays, he added, "I will say, and please print this. That was definitely not true. It was not Donald's schedule. We love Donald. You can fully blame my schedule."

It has been almost a decade since Community's sixth and final season aired on Yahoo! Screen, a short-lived streaming network that hoped the cult-favorite show would give it a fighting chance of competing with the likes of Hulu and Netflix. It was the third time the show had "ended," but critically for fans, it wasn't quite the ending they had hoped for. 

That's because, due to a long-running joke in the fandom, the show's audience had been demanding "six seasons and a movie." The joke came from a moment in Community's second season, when Abed shouted "six seasons and a movie!" after being told that his then-favorite TV series, NBC's short-lived The Cape, was going to be quickly cancelled. In the real world, The Cape lasted only nine episodes, but the joke has been going for more than ten years. When the announcement finally came, NBCUniversal proved they were in on the joke, hashtagging the announcement with "Six seasons and a movie!" on social media.

"It hasn't been shot yet," McHale said. "It will be. And I don't have a definitive update because we thought for a moment it was going to all happen this year, and then it didn't. But we have the money, and that is a huge step. And hopefully, people still want to see it. And Peacock's paying for it. And so I can't wait to do it. I'll say vaguely next year. How about that?"

Related:

Since Community, virtually every member of the cast has gone on to great things. McHale, who was already well-known as the host of The Soup, went on to star in a number of short-lived sitcoms as well as playing Sylvester Pemberton on Stargirl and Johnny Cage in a series of animated Mortal Kombat movies. Glover, in addition to performing as Childish Gambino, has Atlanta and a couple of appearances in Spider-Man movies. Alison Brie got GLOW, BoJack Horseman, and a number of movie and TV projects. Yvette Nicole Brown has become a pop culture ambassador, appearing in dozens of projects including a recurring role on Talking Dead and roles in The Odd Couple, Inside Out 2, and Beebo Saves Christmas. Jacobs appears on Transatlantic and Invincible, and appeared in movies like Life of the Party and The Contractor. Danny Pudi has done a number of projects, including Strange Planet, DuckTales, and Powerless.

On top of all that, creator Dan Harmon went on to co-create and showrun Rick and Morty, and fan-favorite Community directors Joe and Anthony Russo helped shape popular culture with a number of Marvel movies, including Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. 

Trending Now: