Joel McHale believes the Community movie will shoot next summer with Donald Glover

The and a movie part of #SixSeasonsAndAMovie will air on Peacock, come hell or high water. There’s something slightly cursed about the fans waiting all this time for a movie, it getting announced, and then delayed by the writers strike—then again, maybe it all makes perfect sense for Community. Regardless, the promised day is approaching, even if it’s fueled purely by Joel McHale’s optimism.

“We’re shooting it next summer,” McHale says confidently in a new interview on Kelly Ripa’s podcast. Not only that, but erstwhile co-star Donald Glover is definitely in: “Donald’s coming back and that’s really important. The fact that Donald’s going to do it, that was the big piece. But I think everyone’s coming back. I mean, so far we’re pretty good. And I think that will happen. If not then, you know, Donald will be there.” He joked, “See, it’ll just be Donald. It’ll just be an episode of Atlanta.”

Community creator Dan Harmon previously indicated that Glover would be part of the revival film, and Glover himself said “we’re supposed to be shooting it soon” in a GQ video in April. (They would not, in fact, be shooting it soon.) Glover left the series in its fifth season, but returned during the pandemic for a charity reading of the episode “Cooperative Polygraphy” via Zoom. During that special event, Pedro Pascal read for the role originally played by Walton Goggins—but McHale thinks there’s room for both in the Community movie.

“Hopefully Walton and Pedro would come back on, but Pedro seems to be the most famous person now on the planet, so I don’t know,” he says on the podcast. As for original cast member Chevy Chase, “Yeah, I don’t think so,” he says, adding sarcastically, “There wasn’t any issues at all when we were making the show.”

“Well, technically, his character died…. He died and he was off the show,” McHale points out. As long as hope is alive for the Community movie, we’ll all survive.