On the latest episode of Six Seasons and a Podcast, Dan Harmon — creator of Community and co-creator of Rick and Morty — revealed what fans shouldn’t expect to see from the upcoming long-awaited Community movie.
Harmon said that the original series was certainly known for episodes that served as genre homages, with the Western-themed paintball episodes being especially popular.
“It’s a lot easier for me to rule stuff out than tell you what we’re pursuing,” Harmon explained. “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?”
Harmon went on to clarify that Dungeons & Dragons, which was the focus of another beloved Community episode, will also not be the focus of the film.
“Or we’d play Dungeons & Dragons for 90 minutes. I kinda gotta rule that out — maybe a better writer wouldn’t,” Harmon joked.
Community concluded its acclaimed six-season run in 2015 after jumping across multiple networks. The series has since gained further popularity through streaming services like Netflix, leading many fans to renew the “Six Seasons and a Movie” campaign that spawned from the show itself. With the announcement of the film becoming a reality, it seems like the series’ long-echoed slogan is finally being fulfilled.