“It’s hard because they’re all incredibly talented and very busy,” Andrew Guest said of the NBC comedy’s cast.

Community writer reveals reason behind long-awaited movie’s delay: ‘We got very close’

"It's hard because they're all incredibly talented and very busy," Andrew Guest said of the NBC comedy's cast.

By Kathleen Perricone

March 2, 2026 7:25 p.m. ET

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The cast of 'Community' is set to return for the movie, except for Chevy Chase. Credit: Mitchell Haaseth/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty

How much longer will the *Community* movie be deferred?

It's been a decade since the NBC sitcom concluded its six-season run with the promise of "#andamovie" flashing on screen at the end of the series finale.

Chevy Chase as Pierce, Joel McHale as Jeff, Ken Jeong as Señor Chang, and Yvette Nicole Brown as Shirley on ‘Community’.

Trae Patton/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty

In a 2024 interview with Deadline, two years after Peacock greenlit the long-awaited project, series star Joel McHale teased: "I really do think it’s happening this year, and probably next week."

At the time, he cited "working around" Donald Glover's busy schedule as reason for possible delay, which Glover denied and McHale recanted.

Two years later, the *Community* movie remains at a standstill. So what happened?

“We got very close to shooting that,” *Community* writer Andrew Guest revealed on the Feb. 26 episode of *The Watch* podcast. "As the writers' strikes and actors' strikes were ending [in 2023], all of our cast were available. All of them wanted to do it. We had a line producer. We had a script that we were in the process of starting to rewrite and one of our actors' projects sort of came in conflict in terms of timing."

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Although other television shows, like *Arrested Development*'s 2013 season on Netflix, have managed scheduling conflicts by filming scenes with actors separately, Guest insists that won't work for *Community*.

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"The fun and energy of that show is the chemistry between these people in the same room, around a table," he told *The Watch'*s Andy Greenwald. "So we have to have them all in the same place at the same time.”

Danny Pudi as Abed, Chevy Chase as Pierce, Gillian Jacobs as Britta, Joel McHale as Jeff, and Donald Glover as Troy on ‘Community’.

Lewis Jacobs/NBC

However, that wasn't always the case on *Community*. Behind-the-scenes drama with Chevy Chase resulted in the *Saturday Night Live* alum shooting separately from the rest of the cast before he left the show in 2013.

"There was some of that done with one particular actor occasionally," Guest admitted with a laugh. "But the rest of the cast are delightful, all get along great, and we want them in the same place."

Check out *The Watch*'s full interview with Andrew Guest below.

- Comedy Movies

Original Article on Source

Source: “EW Comedy”