“Six seasons and movie!” shouts Abed Nadir (Danny Pudi) in a Season 2 episode of Community. Since that moment, loyal fans of the sitcom have taken the phrase as a rallying cry for an often beleaguered show. Now, its creator, Dan Harmon, gives hope that the hashtag might still become a reality.
“If I pull out a typewriter right now and write a Community movie just from my own mind, then I have to go through the heartbreak and agony of finding out which of the people are going to show up to make it,” Harmon said on the Larry King Now show. “Whereas, on the other hand, if I wait for everybody to line up and say, ‘We’re all out of work and ready to do a Community movie!’ well, I guess that’s a bad idea too.”
Despite Harmon’s typical show of insecurity, he seemed confident that a movie would eventually come to pass. “It’ll make a great movie,” he said. “It’ll happen.”
Community first debuted on NBC in 2009, following the often-bizarre adventures of a study group at a Midwestern community college. It won huge praise for its surreal comedy and self-aware plotting, but often struggled to find a wider audience, and was cancelled twice by NBC. A sixth season was finally made on the web-only Yahoo! Screen.
The cast have frequenly spoken that they hope to complete the six-seasons-and-a-movie prophesy. The show’s lead actor, Joel McHale, told Variety back in May that “if somebody funds it, we would love to make a movie. The way Dan has already described it — which I could not agree more with — is it can’t just be a two-hour episode. It has to have a real budget and it has to be probably pretty epic. We need money. Netflix has the money!” Cool. Cool cool cool.