Community Movie: Dan Harmon Gets Philosophical Contemplating Follow-up

It’s been six years since the beloved sitcom, Community, came to an end and fans of the show are still hoping for series creator Dan Harmon to fulfill the promise of “six seasons and a movie.” Discussions of a Community film have been ongoing for years, and the topic has been coming up more and more ever since the series was put on Netflix last April, which was followed by the cast’s virtual reunion. During a recent chat with Collider, Harmon got pretty deep while talking about the long-rumored movie and its target audience.

“Here’s the biggest philosophical question: Are you supposed to service a mythical new viewer? The obvious, dogmatic, practical, off-the-street answer is like, No, you don’t. It’s fan service. Why would there be a Community movie? Who do you think is going to walk in off the street and buy popcorn and sit and watch a Community movie like that? They deserve to be punished. Why are they doing that?,” Harmon explained.

“Saying that that person doesn’t exist is a lot different from asking yourself structurally if you’re supposed to design the movie for them, because there’s a new viewer inside of all of us,” he continued. “If every Marvel movie started with inside references to all 90 other Marvel movies, even if you had seen all of them — even if on one level you’d be like, ‘This is the greatest Marvel movie ever because all of the movies are in here’ — I think that a part of your brain would be going, ‘Yeah, but it’s kind of not a good movie for this reason.’ It’s just speaking in gibberish. What does this mean? I exist in that camp like you? Formalistically, you owe a movie that I think the fans can not only enjoy, but they can stand back and go, You know, the crazy thing about this Community movie is that if you didn’t know there was a show, this is an insanely good movie. There’s a reason to watch it and then definitely watch the series because now you’re like, ‘Holy crap.’ I don’t know if that’s arrogance, pretentiousness, responsibility, self-deprecation, torture. I can’t get myself out of that camp.”

Earlier this year, Yvette Nicole Brown (Shirley Bennett) shared that she believes the movie is coming, especially since the cast wants to do it.

“We have a reunion every morning,” Brown revealed. “We have a group text that is popping. We joke and laugh with each other randomly. You never know who is going to start it — it may be a joke somebody has or it may be some fan art somebody got — but we always check in with each other daily. The movie? I think it’s coming. I don’t know when, [but] I know we all want to do it and that’s half the battle.”

All six seasons of Community are currently streaming on Netflix.