Yesterday it was announced that Community would be coming home to the Internet to live, returning to the digital womb that had for so long nurtured it and not even having to pay rent, no matter what its father might threaten. But naturally, news of a sixth season led to the conditioned cries of “and a movie,” because to be a Community fan is to live in a constant state of anxious dissatisfaction, always demanding more. Fortunately, Sony is here to stoke those flames, with president of programming Zack Van Amburg telling The Hollywood Reporter—in answer to the possibility of the seventh season fans have already started reflexively lobbying for—“I don’t know, let’s see how our movie does! Isn’t that our plan? There’s no way we’re not making the movie now! I think once we make the movie, let’s look up and decide how much more Community the world wants. We promised six seasons and a movie, how much more do you want?!”
Knowing that the answer to that is, as always, a collective cry of “More, lest we no longer have dying light to rage against!” accompanied by a torrent of GIFs, Amburg says, “I’d be lying if I told you that we have not had some very early and preliminary conversations that are very exciting about what a potential movie could be and who might direct it. It’s early but it’s completely in our thought process.” In other words, get settled, for we have many years of discussing what may or may not happen to Community to come—as a TV show, as a movie, as a hologram that will recount its legend to our ancestors from the steps of studio ruins, and, finally, as a pill that will stimulate the cerebral cortex directly to induce laughter tempered by worry and undefined longing.
Most immediately, Community is a show on Yahoo Screen, the search engine’s fledgling service that is, for now, free to stream and home to such shows as Losing It With John Stamos (a show that is not, apparently, about losing your virginity to John Stamos). And according to Amburg, Yahoo was so serious about making Community a cornerstone of building a name for that service, it was Yahoo who reached out to Sony during the latter’s talks with Hulu, and made a convincing pitch—one that was enough for Sony to overlook what Amburg calls a “significant offer” from Hulu. Yahoo’s counteroffer was so generous, apparently, Amburg says that there will be no difference from the production budget of the broadcast version, adding that Yahoo is “fully supporting it in their deal and beyond.” Echoing those sentiments, Yahoo’s Kathy Savitt told Vulture yesterday, “Our hope is…that it has a healthy future for season six and well beyond.”
Of course, any “beyond” would mean renegotiating contracts with all of the cast and crew, figuring out where a movie fits into all of this, and so on. But it does indicate just how determined Yahoo is to keep Community around for as long as possible, always pushing for just a little bit more. Which makes sense—after all, Yahoo is the Internet.