The Big Picture

• Fans' excitement for a Community movie persists nearly a decade after the show ended.
• Jim Rash attributes Community 's success to the show's innovative storytelling and its beloved characters.
• The screenplay for the Community movie is complete, but a release date has not yet been set.

There are some shows that resonate so hard with their public that they never really go away. The NBCsitcom Community has been off the air for almost a decade now, but fans are still excited about the upcoming movie as though the series had just wrapped its six-season run. During a conversation to promote his new movie Fly Me to the Moon, Community star Jim Rash talked with Collider's Steve Weintraub about the reasons why he thinks the comedy series earned such a strong following.

During the interview, Rash laid out some elements that might prove why Community became so popular (despite the series' struggle to get renewed in its later seasons). The actor and screenwriter — who played the eccentric dean of the community college in the series — also had a lot of praise for series creator and showrunner Dan Harmon (Rick and Morty), who made it a point of pushing the boundaries of television storytelling throughout the series' run. But what exactly keeps Community alive? Here's what Rash had to say:

"I have to say, it's both the original people and the people who discovered it during our pandemic time when it came back out again. It’s just t he amazing writing and the fact that we were breaking the mold in the sense that the world could become a genre like that, Dan Harmon's mind of loving pop culture and movies, and to be able to have a set and then have the library turn into paintball or lava or whatever it wanted to be. But then, at the core, I think with anything, you find these characters that you gravitate towards . At the end of the day, whether it's Cheers or it's Community, or whatever TV show, it's all about that."

How Did 'Community' "Break the Mold" on Television?

As any fan will tell you, the paintball episodes were the season events in which the structure of Community frequently got shaken to its core. However, Harmon and his creative team bent and broke the rules of television through the story's community college several times, always according to the theme that each episode approached. At the same time, the series also worked because of the dynamics of the wildly different characters having to work together to save their timeline, find a pen, or just do their homework.

The Community movie is currently in the works at Peacock. So far, the whole main cast (except Chevy Chase) is excited about returning, but a filming schedule hasn't been officially announced yet. Back in April, Allison Brie (Apples Never Fall) revealed that the screenplay is already finished, which is a huge step for a project that fans have been demanding for almost ten years.

You can stream all seasons of Community now on Peacock. Stay tuned at Collider for Weintraub's full conversation with Rash and further updates on the Community movie.

Community

A suspended lawyer is forced to enroll in a community college with an eccentric staff and student body.

Watch on Peacock

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