Can We Please Stop Asking the ‘Community’ Cast for Movie Non-Updates?

Emotionally, the Community fandom is now six seasons into Community movie news with no Community movie in sight.

Back in September 2022, Peacock announced that they had greenlit the long-awaited feature length film sequel of the cult NBC sitcom that seemed to so rarely get good news. After six tumultuous seasons that saw Community creator Dan Harmon ousted and then reinstated, a cancellation from NBC, the departure of core cast members (both voluntary and not so much) and a disappointingly brief revival on streaming, Community was poised to finally deliver on its promise of “six seasons and a movie.” As such, the Community cast and fandom rejoiced. A year and a half later, the study group is still partying — and we still don’t even know if Harmon has a finished script.

Just in the last couple of weeks, we’ve heard multiple contradictory reports about the still-unfilmed Community movie coming from within the show’s cast and crew, including Donald Glover’s claim that he’d finally received a completed script, Dan Harmon’s declaration that he definitely hasn’t finished the script but will probably do it soon, and, now, Joel McHale’s bizarre assertion in a recent Deadline interview that the movie will begin filming sometime between next week and the end of the year. The production of Dean Pelton’s commercial wasn’t as confusing and chaotic as the Community movie’s pre-shooting press circus.

“We go to the center of the earth,” McHale joked about the supposed script that Glover received but McHale himself hasn’t seen. “It’s like the movie The Core.” McHale explained that the reason the Community movie hasn’t begun filming actually has nothing to do with Harmon’s mythical script and its debatable existence, claiming that Glover’s complicated calendar as a multi-hyphenate mega star is the biggest obstacle the production faces. “But I really do think it’s happening this year,” McHale clarified of the shooting, “and probably next week. It’s basically working around Donald’s schedule.”

Look, Community fans know to take their wins where we can get them, and the mere fact that Glover is even just theoretically on board is a massive W. Still, Yvette Nicole Brown has yet to be officially confirmed for the final cast list — we're just going off Ken Jeong's word that Shirley Bennett will be in the movie. At this point, all we know for sure about the Community feature film is what we learned in 2022: If the movie is ever actually made, it will be on Peacock, and if the script is ever actually completed, Dan Harmon will be its writer. Well, that and Chevy Chase won’t be in it. 

But beyond Glover’s soft yes, there have been virtually no developments to the story of the Community movie since Peacock first promised to make it happen some 18 months ago. In that time, the cast and creatives of the franchise have all gone off to work on other projects, whether its Glover’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith, McHale’s Animal Control or Harmon’s small empire of idiosyncratic animated sitcoms, all of which require these stars to do magazine interviews, podcast appearances and late-night guest spots to promote their non-Community enterprises.

So, until a panel of independent journalists and adjudicators confirms that, yes, Harmon finally finished the Community movie script and the cast is booked for a table read, let’s all collectively agree to stop forcing these artists to give creative non-answers, half-hearted claims and rumors fresh from their own asses anytime they’re asked about a film that is, currently, less real than Abed’s Jesus movie.