Sophia Michaels
When Peacock announced plans to fulfill Community’s “Six seasons and a movie” promise last month, a few key cast members were absent from the reunion plans, notably Donald Glover and Yvette Nicole Brown. While fans of the cult series assumed that artist also known as Childish Gambino was likely too busy to re-enroll in Greendale Community College, creator Dan Harmon has provided some hope that Glover is involved in Community: The Movie.
“I think that Donald is coming, based on word of mouth, but it’s just the deal isn’t official or wasn’t official. It would be difficult to really commit to doing this thing without Donald,” Harmon told Variety.
“So I believe he is coming back. I think if there’s names missing from a list, it’s because the names that are on the list, their deals are agreed upon enough that it’s OK to say they are on the list, and anybody that’s not on a list, it’s just not the case yet. So there is nothing official about anybody being out.”
While Glover, who played Troy on the series, wasn’t named among the returning cast — Joel McHale, Alison Brie, Gillian Jacobs, Jim Rash, and Ken Jeong are all back — the Atlanta star had previously expressed interest in a class reunion during a pandemic-era virtual table read fundraiser.
As Glover said during the livestream, “Watching it now, I’m like, ‘Oh, this show’s really punk.’ Really subversive and like kind of punk. We had so much fun and now I’m like, ‘I want to watch this show again, like it was brand-new.’”
Glover isn’t the only one who has gone on to bigger and better things after leaving Community: Directors like the Fast and the Furious series’ Justin Lin and Anthony and Joe Russo — the brother duo that directed Marvel blockbusters like Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: End Game — also served time at Greendale. With no filmmaker currently attached to Community: The Movie, could more famous alumni return?
“Sony’s strategy was, let’s make this a project that exists and then we’ll talk about attaching directors. I think they’re doing that because, depending on the size of that director, the director could then make the deal more complicated to close,” Harmon added.
“So it’s much easier to make sure it’s happening and now we can go out to directors and say, would you be interested? But that process hasn’t started yet… It also makes it exciting to be able to just announce, ‘So-and-so is directing it,’ and, ‘Now Donald Glover is officially in it for real,’ and we can parcel out these announcements.’”
