The Community Movie Won’t Include 2 Fan-Favorite Show Details

Creator Dan Harmon confirms the Community movie won’t include two fan-favorite show details in the hopes of keeping things fresh for audiences.

Just a few months after the project was confirmed, Dan Harmon has revealed that the Community movie won’t include two fan-favorite show details. Community gained a cult following thanks to its meta-humor, pop culture references, and homages to classic film and TV tropes during its six-season run on NBC and Yahoo! Screen from 2009 to 2015. The series was nearly canceled more than once, only to be saved by several fan campaigns to keep the show afloat. The long-awaited movie will finally fulfill the show’s popular slogan “six seasons and a movie,” as the film’s release will take that mantra from hopeful to prophetic.

In a recent interview with Six Seasons & A Podcast, Harmon, who was the main creative force behind the show and also served as the Community showrunner during seasons 1-3 and seasons 5-6, divulged which fan favorite genre homages from the show will not be part of Community: The Movie‘s plot. While the fact that the movie is being made at all is very exciting, some fans may be a little disappointed that Harmon has effectively ruled out any chance of the film featuring the study group playing another game of Dungeons and Dragons, or an intense game of paintball. See what Harmon shared below:

For instance, we go, ‘Do we really think it’d be a good idea to be a paintball episode?’ It’s one of the first things to rule out because it’s the first thing off the top of your head, and that’s an issue with the ‘Community’ movie concept. We did a lot of episodes where you are joyfully locked into a construct that isn’t a traditional sitcom narrative, but is rather through the lens of David Fincher or Martin Scorsese. There were a lot of special episodes that were kind of like genre homages. The paintball thing was one of them. We tried to do a bunch more paintballs, and they were all perfectly wonderful things to do, but would anything ever capture the joy of the original paintball episode?

Related: Community: Every Paintball Episode & Game In The Show

Ever since Danny Pudi’s Abed came up with the “six seasons and a movie” mantra back in season 2, a Community movie has been something fans and people involved in the show have been pining for. In September, those desires were fulfilled as streaming platform Peacock and Sony Pictures TV announced that Community: The Movie was finally happening. Since Peacock is producing the movie, it seems very likely that the film will come out as a streaming exclusive rather than a traditional theatrical release. Pudi, Joel McHale, Alison Brie, and Gillian Jacobs have all been confirmed for the cast and will all be reprising their roles as members of the vaunted study group in the show.

Also returning will be Ken Jeong as unpredictable former Spanish professor Ben Chang and Jim Rash as the costume-loving Dean Craig Pelton. Keith David, who portrayed the intelligent and reclusive Elroy Patashnik in season 6, the show’s final season, has also said that when Community: The Movie happens, he’ll be involved. Yvette Nicole Brown has not been confirmed to return as Shirley Bennett, and it’s very unlikely that Chevy Chase comes back as Pierce Hawthorne considering his ignominious departure from the show during season 4 due to inappropriate behavior and creative differences with showrunner Harmon.

While Donald Glover hasn’t been confirmed to return as Troy Barnes, Harmon has said that the rapper/actor is “down to clown” and that he could not imagine doing the movie without Glover, which is a very encouraging update for his potential return to the study group. Harmon is currently in the process of writing the script, which he has assured fans will not include any reboot clichés or a story revolving around the closing down and reopening of Greendale Community College. Considering that the Community movie script is still being written and shooting has yet to begin, a release for the film as early as 2023 seems farfetched. It won’t be a big budget movie, but even so, a much more likely timeline would place the release of Community: The Movie sometime in 2024.

More: Community: Every Major Actor Who Left The Show (& Why)

Source: Six Seasons & A Podcast