Sometimes it feels as though the universe is comically, cosmically aligned against the Community movie. For years fans hoped, prayed, manifested, begged; finally, almost exactly a year ago, Peacock finally made their wishes come true. But then a writers strike happened, and then an actors strike happened, and it delayed the long-awaited event even further.
Well, Dan Harmon knows it’s been a long and winding road for everyone involved, and when this movie does get off the ground, he doesn’t want to waste anyone’s time. He and former Community writer Andrew Guest “still need to hole up for a few days and finish the script,” according to a new profile from The Hollywood Reporter, but when they do, he wants it to be a lock. “I don’t want these now-superstar people, like Emmy-winning Donald Glover, who are bothering to gather out of loyalty to this thing, to come back and once again be getting blue pages run down by an intern that totally contradict what they spent all night memorizing,” Harmon told the outlet. “I want to have a veneer of, ‘Here’s your reward.’ I don’t want them to go, like, ‘Oh, he’s learned nothing, he’s treating us like cattle again.’”
And Harmon has learned to be a better boss, at least to hear him tell it. “I used to think it was part of the job to have your toothbrush at the office and that a good employee did the same and you tried to reward that person with an Emmy or a credit that would allow them to launch their own franchises,” he said. “I thought the best I could do was win wars and my soldiers would thank me later, or at the very worst, they would have sacrificed themselves for a noble cause, and that’s a world where making a bad TV show is worse than hurting a human being, which doesn’t make much sense to me anymore.”
All this to say: “and a movie” is coming, this time minus the toxicity. (Mostly because Chevy Chase won’t be there.) Now let’s get the actors a fair deal so the prophecy can finally be fulfilled!