Chevy Chase may be out, but Donald Glover is probably in for Community movie, says Dan Harmon

The prophecy is finally being fulfilled of six seasons and a Community movie, praise be to Peacock. Just what kind of movie it will be is still unclear, but suffice it to say that (most of) the gang is getting back together. Stars Joel McHale, Danny Pudi, Alison Brie, Gillian Jacobs, Jim Rash, and Ken Jeong are all confirmed, while some other significant names—Chevy Chase, Donald Glover, and Yvette Nicole Brown—are still up in the air.

Regarding Chase, whose character died in the fifth season, “I don’t even know if it’s legal for him to come back,” creator Dan Harmon admitted during a Comic-Con panel (via Variety). “That may be out of my hands. There may be something I sign for with an insurance company.” (Harmon and Chase had an infamous falling out behind the scenes of the series.)

As for Donald Glover, who exploded to fame with his rap persona Childish Gambino and his own show Atlanta following his own fifth season exit, Harmon is a bit more optimistic. “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,” he 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.”

That also seems to indicate good news concerning Brown, who left the show ahead of the sixth season to take care of her ailing father. Behind the scenes, writer Andrew Guest will also return to help write the script for the film. “He was a great Community writer in the…I don’t want to say the peak days…. Andrew was classic Community, He wrote the Dungeons & Dragons episode,” Harmon said during the panel. “He’s going to help me make sure that I don’t pull a Harmon with that script getting executed so that we can actually deliver it and start shooting it.”

Regarding shooting, “There’s a director that directed some of my favorite episodes of Community that it would be great to see be able to do the movie,” Harmon teased, “And that’s not even mentioning the Russo Brothers, who I would also love to see come back. But I’m just making the assumption that they’re too busy. But we haven’t had any official, legitimate conversations with people.”

“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,” he continued. “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.”

Harmon also revealed that there was a “reasonably intense bidding situation” for the film, with major streamers like Amazon interested. But they decided to go with Peacock, “the Greendale Community College of streamers,” because of its “love and dedication.” (Community’s last foray into streaming, while still pretty decent quality-wise, was not altogether successful.)

“They do share a DNA with us, but more importantly, because of that, I think they saw this and knew we’d be a beloved partner with them. And they’ve really expressed that in the ways of how they’re very, very interested in promoting the movie and letting us make it the way we want to,” Harmon shared. “They were able to express those things in a contract that means something. This is a case of, there might be a more popular prom date here, but do we want to just be lucky to partner with someone that doesn’t have to give us the time of day? Or do we want to really actually collaborate with somebody that’s kind of in the same zone as us, which is, we want to make something great and let everybody know when it’s on and stuff like that.”