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I'd Love A Rick And Morty And Star Trek Crossover, And It Might Be Easier Than You'd Think

mick.joest@CinemaBlend.com (Mick Joest) — Wed, 27 May 2026 00:45:00 +0000

Star Trek and Rick and Morty crossing over sounded like fantasy back when the latter's former showrunner, Mike McMahon, first wrote Lower Decks. Fast forward to now, and Dan Harmon confirmed to CinemaBlend that it would actually be pretty easy to make it happen, despite Lower Decks' ending.

While speaking to Harmon and showrunner Scott Marader ahead of Rick and Morty's Season 9 return on the 2026 TV schedule, I brought up Warner Bros. Discovery's pending merger with Paramount Skydance and how that would put both franchises under the same umbrella. I asked if it would be possible for an official crossover to happen, even with Lower Decks off the air, and Harmon confirmed it'd be easier than I even thought to make it happen:

I mean, all those Lower Decks assets exist somewhere. Studios love saving money. There's a, there's a digital bin full of phasers and Jefferies tubes that already have been paid for.

He's right, and if Dan Harmon and crew say they want access to the Lower Decks assets for a crossover episode/special, is Paramount Skydance going to say no? If it were me, I wouldn't say no to one of the best animated series out there giving my legacy franchise some increased relevance.

And while Star Trek: Lower Decks and Rick and Morty have distinctly different styles in how their teams approach storytelling, Scott Marader confirmed there are people on staff who would be great for a crossover adventure. Beyond Lower Decks creator Mike McMahon serving as a previous showrunner for the series, Marader confirmed they have a former LD writer on staff:

We also share a writer with them. Garrick Bernard was a writer that worked on both, who's a big Star Trek fan.

Bernard, who contributed heavily to the first three seasons of Star Trek: Lower Decks, is now working on Rick and Morty, according to showrunner Scott Marader. He's not the only fan on staff who is a massive Trekkie as Dan Harmon is also a big fan of the franchise as well.

How To Watch Rick And Morty Season 9 And Stream The Animated Comedy From Anywhere

Nick Venable — Mon, 25 May 2026 00:38:07 +0000

Quick Links

How to watch Rick and Morty Season 9 in the U.S.
How to watch Rick and Morty Season 9 while traveling abroad
Rick And Morty Season 9's Rotten Tomatoes' score and more details

The most chaotic grandfather and grandson tag team is returning to the small screen, and who knows how many universes will be destroyed in the process? Rick and Morty is back for Season 9, and there's no turning back now, so read on to find out the easiest ways to watch new episodes from anywhere in the world, or use one of the links above.

How To Watch Rick And Morty Season 9 In The US

(Image credit: Adult Swim)

Rick and Morty's Season 9 premiere is set to air on Adult Swim on Sunday, May 24, at 11:00 p.m. ET / 10:00 p.m. CT. New episodes will air weekly every Sunday night until all ten episodes have come out.

For those living in the U.S., Adult Swim is available through just about any paid TV service, whether cable, satellite or streaming. Below is a list of TV providers to choose from.

Subscribe to YouTube TV and save $15 a month for the first five months.
Subscribe to DirecTV to save up to $500 over the next two years.
Subscribe to one of Sling's various plans, including 1-3 day passes.
Subscribe to Hulu + Live TV.

Any U.S. citizens who are out and about traveling elsewhere in the world can use NordVPN or another VPN service to log into the above platforms risk-free.

How To Watch Rick And Morty Season 9 In The UK And Australia

Whether you're an American traveling abroad, or just a Rick and Morty fan who already lives on the other side of the globe, Season 9 won't be a struggle to stream, although it may have to wait until the next day, depending on what service you're paying for.

In the UK and Australia, Rick and Morty's Seaosn 9 premiere will be available to stream via HBO Max subscription on Monday, May 25. If you don't already have an HBO Max account, but do have an Amazon Prime account, sign up now on Prime Video for the HBO Max add-on.

Anyone who is traveling and happens to be in a country where you find yourself unable to log in trouble-free, avoid those hassles by acceswsing your account safely through a VPN like NordVPN, which anyone can use to stream new HBO Max series or to log into one of the TV services noted above, all while save 76% in the process. Click below to get started!

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More Details About Rick And Morty Season 9

(Image credit: Adult Swim)

What Are Critics Saying About RIck And Morty Season 9?

Amazingly enough, Rick and Morty's ninth season is currently its highest rated outing yet, standing at 100% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. It's a fairly big step up from Season 8, and takes over the spot formerly held by the very first season.

Season 9 - 100%
Season 1 - 97%
Season 3 - 96%
Season 4 - 96%
Season 8 - 93%
Season 2 - 91%
Season 6 - 91%
Season 5 - 87%
Season 7 - 77%

CinemaBlend's own Mick Joest also thinks that Season 9 is fantastic, and believes it's worth jumping back into even for fans who have fallen off the watch-wagon, saying the episodes are among the most hilarious, as well as the most soul-crushing.

Rick And Morty Season 9 Cast

Ian Cardoni - Rick Sanchez
Harry Belden - Morty Smith
Chris Parnell - Jerry Smith
Spencer Grammer - Summer Smith
Sarah Chalke - Beth Smith
Owen Wilson - TBA

Rick And Morty Season 9 Episode Titles And Airdates

Episode 901: "There's Something About Morty" - Airing May 24
Episode 902: "Ricks Days, Seven Nights" - Airing May 31
Episode 903: "Rick Fu Hustle" - Airing June 7
Episode 904: "A Ricker Runs Through It" - Airing June 14
Episode 905: "Jer Bud" - Airing June 21
Episode 906: "Erickerhead" - Airing June 28
Episode 907: "MortGully: The Last Rickforest" - Airing July 5
Episode 908: "Rickuiem Mort a Dream" - Airing July 12
Episode 909: "Salute Your Morts" - Airing July 19
Episode 910: "Field of Dreams" - Airing July 26

Watch Rick And Morty's Season 9 Trailer

Rick And Morty Movie Confirmed By Dan Harmon, Who Also Told Me The 'Dream' Director Making It Happen

mick.joest@CinemaBlend.com (Mick Joest) — Tue, 19 May 2026 16:53:38 +0000

A Rick and Morty movie is officially happening! Co-creator Dan Harmon confirmed the exciting news with CinemaBlend ahead of the show's Season 9 debut on the 2026 TV schedule. Not only that, but Harmon told us the previously rumored project will be helmed by series vet Jacob Hair. Keeping it in the family. Such is the Smith way.

I had a chance to speak to Harmon and showrunner Scott Marder about the wild and whimsical ninth season, which took place after a rumor hit the web seemingly confirming the film's existence. The Community mastermind was able to confirm on the record that, yes, a movie is on the way, but not before joking that he couldn't comment on it.

I got to go get a coffee (laughs). We saw the same leak, and we are therefore, now able to confirm that there is a movie in the works. Jacob Hair is, is the director. I mean, we didn't shop around. He is an absolute, to say rock star is honestly feels like trivializing it because that implies like some kind of flash in the pan, kind of exciting. I mean, Jacob has it like came onto our team. It was like adding a pillar to it.

Now in charge of helming the upcoming movie, Jacob Hair has served as a supervising director for Rick and Morty for years. While he may not have the same name recognition as the Francis Ford Coppolas of the world, he's been with one of the best animated series of all time since Season 4, and per Scott Marder and Dan Harmon, he's the perfect fit for the job.

While we still have yet to learn if the movie is going to be in theaters or something exclusive to those with an HBO Max subscription, Marder talked about why Hair was the best choice for the movie. He pointed to the upcoming season as evidence of that, which I had a chance to view in its entirety ahead of the interview:

He's our supervising director. I mean, if [Season] 9 feels good to you, he's got a hand. He is responsible for that.

I already wrote my spoiler-free take of Rick and Morty Season 9, and will say, Marader has me very excited with his comment. I will say Season 9 felt like the best the series has been in a long time, and may ultimately stand on its own as one of the best seasons.

Dan Harmon continued his praise for Jacob Hair, saying the supervising director's name was immediately pulled as the choice for the Rick and Morty movie. He even compared him to former Community star Donald Glover, with the best compliment a creative can give:

I think when we started talking about a movie and could a movie happen and who would direct it, the first question was, 'Can Jacob do it?' Because that would be a dream, as opposed to going out and just getting somebody that did a great job on another animated thing. This is our guy, who has done some of the most amazing work on the show. It's like the director version of Donald Glover in that I don't know if there's a limitation to what he can do; we haven't found it yet.

While Warner Bros. Discovery executives might've preferred someone like Taika Waititi or Steven Spielberg, both Harmon and Marder are pretty thrilled they get someone with experience working on Rick and Morty to helm the movie.

Hopefully, with the impending merger between Paramount Skydance and WBD, this movie doesn't get lost in the mix. Additionally, we've seen how long it's taken the Community movie to get off the ground, though unlike that fandom, Rick and Morty fans have new episodes to enjoy in the meantime.

Rick and Morty is renewed up until Season 12, and will have its milestone Season 10 next year. It's an impressive achievement in the modern television climate, in which guaranteed seasons are less and less of a commodity. Suddenly, "100 years of Rick and Morty" doesn't sound so crazy, especially with this movie on the way.

We eagerly await more details on the Rick and Morty movie, with Season 9 set to premiere on Adult Swim on May 24th. I can't wait to see the widespread reaction to it, and have a feeling we'll see a lot of classic fans of the series back on board.

I Asked Dan Harmon About Ricky And Morty Ever Ending, And He Gave Me One Reason The Show Might Consider It

mick.joest@CinemaBlend.com (Mick Joest) — Mon, 26 May 2025 19:58:17 +0000

Rick and Morty Season 8 is here, and it's sounds like just the latest batch of episodes we'll be enjoying in the years to come. While there might've been a time when the Adult Swim series was considering an endpoint, creator Dan Harmon and showrunner Scott Marder confirmed to CinemaBlend there's no end in sight (currently) for the sci-fi animated series, and gave me a good reason why.

I had a chance to talk to Harmon and Marder ahead of the arrival of the new season and asked about whether they've ever considered an "endgame" for Rick and Morty. There might have been a point that was in the cards when the series was more serialized, but the show's massive popularity has led to them getting the greenlight to make new seasons indefinitely.

In fact, at this point, Dan Harmon doesn't see any reason to stop the train:

It's almost like out of our hands. My feeling is that if we started bothering, if we went like, ‘Let's take a bow and finish on top!’ I think the unspoken answer to that would be like, ‘On top of what? You're already like wallpaper,’ a fixture. I think our job is, to us, playing the game properly is to just see if we can set a record for distance and find joy every single episode. Because I don't know what ribbon we would get from what committee for having the restraint and bravery to after all we've done and been through to go like in season 13 [we’re done].

He has a point, because while some sitcoms like Seinfeld and Young Sheldon took pride in going out while still at their peak, Rick and Morty is in a different category of television (and make significantly fewer episodes per season). It seems he and the rest of the crew are committed to making sure there are many episodes to binge with a Max subscription for our grandchildren years into the future.

I suppose all this to say, the meme of "100 years of Rick and Morty" is a real thing.

Max: Plans start from $9.99 a month
Rick and Morty and other Adult Swim shows are available to stream on Max. Pay $9.99 a month for its With Ads plan, and with three tiers available following a soon-to-be HBO Max subscription, there's some flexibility to your experience. You can also prepay for a year and save up to 20%, if you want to watch the series over and over again.View Deal

That said, there is a caveat to that promise. Dan Harmon noted that in the case where the best episodes of Rick and Morty start to eclipse more recent episodes by a wide margin, he's not opposed to pulling the plug on the animated series.

I can say look, if it's fatigue, if the show starts to suck and we go like, ‘Look, the show sucks now, let's stop making it.’ That would be a different kind of ‘Fine. Great. Here's your award for honesty and self-awareness,' or whatever, but. But I, I think that in a world where like hit shows that have a plan for an ending and does a graceful, wonderful ending, I mean, those shows get to, you know, they, they're like eight episodes long, 6 to 2 seasons.

I thought of Stranger Things' final season when Dan Harmon said that, and yeah, Rick and Morty doesn't need to try and do that. There's nothing wrong with being yet another animated show that continues with no real plan for an ending. Or it can do what The Simpsons did and make a random ending for people wanting to see one, then continue as a series afterward, like nothing happened.

Scott Marder gave his two cents on it all, and it sounds like we could be getting sequels to Interdimensional Cable for years to come. The Rick and Morty showrunner echoed Harmon and assured me there are no conversations about ending the show, even as they wrap up work on Season 10:

Yeah, an ending has not been in the conversation. Like if, if there really were fatigue and it felt like creatively we were starting to bang our heads against the wall, maybe there'd be chatter, but internally I can tell you that the show is still breaking as smooth and fun and like effortlessly through [Season] 10 as it was in the early days that like I just don't see an end in sight right now, which is super exciting. It's really exciting.

As a longtime fan who has had the chance to see a handful of Season 8 episodes in advance, I have to agree. Rick and Morty is firing on all cylinders in the new season, and it's just as good now as it was when I first got into the series. I'm especially a fan of the real story behind that whole group of Ricks teased in the trailer, but I won't spoil the surprise for how that all works out.

Rick and Morty Season 8 airs on Adult Swim Sundays at 11:00 p.m. ET. Set those DVRs and be ready for another batch of wild episodes, because this might end up being one of the best seasons yet.

Looks Like Rick And Morty Is Bringing A Beloved Concept Back In Season 8, Or At Least I'm Desperately Hoping That's The Case

mick.joest@CinemaBlend.com (Mick Joest) — Mon, 14 Apr 2025 13:03:10 +0000

Rick and Morty Season 8 is on the way in late May, and I think the show just gave us the perfect tease to help make the remaining weeks until its arrival absolutely unbearable. I already had this marked as a must-watch show on the 2025 TV schedule, but I'm especially excited after seeing that we may be getting a third Interdimensional Cable episode!

I was already thrilled because Season 8 will seemingly parody the show's own headline-making re-casting its main characters after co-creator Justin Roiland was fired a few years ago. Now, I'm extra jazzed after Adult Swim shared an animatic video that not only revealed new episode titles along, but also visual clues. So, how does this tie into Interdimensional Cable? Take a look at the screenshot below for "Ricker Than Fiction," and continue on below:

(Image credit: Adult Swim)

The duo watching strange creatures in an action-packed TV series screams "Interdimensional Cable" to me, and it's not like it would be SO surprising if the ep format returned. "Rixty Minutes," the Season 1 episode that kicked it all off, remains one of the best Rick and Morty episodes ever, to the point where the Season 3 installment "Morty's Mind Blowers" joked that it was replacing the cable TV motifc.

Fans were teased with its return in Season 7 when we saw the Mr. Stabby talk show, which featured a host who violently stabbed members of his audience to death. It was a funny bit that technically involved the Interdimensional Cable box, but wasn't a full-length assortment of random and seemingly improvised premises that made the first two iterations so special. Here's hoping that Season 8 can scratch the itch that I felt robbed of in the previous season.

Max: Plans start from $9.99 a month
Need a refresher on how great Rick and Morty's Interdimensional Cable episodes were? Check it out on streaming! Pay $9.99 a month for its With Ads plan, and with three tiers available following a Max subscription. You can also prepay for a year and save up to 20%.View Deal

Of course, Dan Harmon and the crew of the acclaimed series are likely aware that fans are desperate for a new Interdimensional Cable episode. I wouldn't put it past them to intentionally show that scene as a way of building up hype, only to entirely subvert expectations and deliver something equally entertaining.

Even if we are being trolled, there's still enough in this video that's teased that I can't wait to see the whole premise of. Check out the full video below, and ask yourself what could be happening in "Hot Rick":

Beyond the obvious Interdimensional Cable tease, I'm most psyched about the season finale, which features Rick hooking Jerry up to some sort of machine. I won't even guess where it's headed, but I generally love it when Jerry and Rick are forced to interact for a full adventure. It's almost always traumatic for the former, but it's not like anyone has ever accused Rick Sanchez of being a good guy.

Strap in and charge that portal device because Rick and Morty is headed back to Adult Swim on Sunday, May 25th, at 11:00 p.m. ET. I'll be staying up past my bedtime to watch the premiere for sure, so I'm hoping this season is as great as past ones.

As The Community Movie Remains In The Works, LeVar Burton Weighs In On A Possible Resolution Donald Glover’s Troy Cliffhanger

Sarah El-Mahmoud — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 18:18:07 +0000

Since LeVar Burton is now on the 2024 TV schedule as host of the new game show Trivial Pursuit, here’s a little TV fun fact on our radars. Did you know the Star Trek: The Next Generation actor was a key part of Donald Glover’s final appearance on Community? Back in 2014, Burton cameoed when Troy Barnes said goodbye to Greendale to go off on a year-long sailing trip on the “Childish Tycoon.” As we get ready for the Community movie on the way, Burton was asked about being part of Glover’s return to the cast.

Yes, a Community movie is in the works after fans have been calling for the “six seasons… and a movie” tagline to become a reality for years. We know that the creator of Community, Dan Harmon, has written the film alongside Andrew Guest and much of the cast will return, including Donald Glover. Here’s what LeVar Burton said of another cameo a decade after his last one:

Ask Dan Harmon.

While LeVar Burton spoke to TVLine about the idea of another cameo in the Community movie, he left it up to the creator to make that decision. With that in mind, it sounds like the actor and new game show host hasn’t been approached about returning.

(Image credit: NBC)

In the Season 5 episode “Geothermal Escapism,” the Community cast say goodbye to Donald Glover’s Troy by watching him leave on the “Childish Tycoon” with LeVar Burton by his side. While he keeps his cool when he boards the ship, in Troy’s final scene in the show, he pulls out a list of Star Trek questions for the actor to answer. In the following Season 5 episode, "Analysis of Cork-Based Networking" it’s then revealed that his boat was captured by pirates in the Gulf of Mexico. Burton said this when asked about whether that report was accurate:

I don’t doubt it. That was the last we heard from them. They’re on the Childish, as are the pirates, so… we may need an update.

When it comes to the Community ending, Troy’s storyline was definitely left with a fun cliffhanger. Wouldn’t it be fun if the upcoming movie followed it and had Troy and LeVar fighting pirates, or something of that sort? The Star Trek actor certainly thinks an “update” is in order for the cliffhanger, and now we’re just curious how Troy will return to the fold.

From what we’ve heard already, the Community movie will involve a college reunion, but will also have Abed being a big director who is ready to execute “his magnum opus.” So there has to be some Community-branded chaos in the storyline, right?

Some of the Community cast have already reunited this season on The Masked Singer when Yvette Nicole Brown went on the show for host and Community co-star, Ken Jeong. When she spoke to CinemaBlend about the reveal earlier this month, she talked about where Shirley might be now. Additionally, Joel McHale has made a few appearances this season on the reality show as well.

While we wait for more updates on the Community movie (which does not have a release date currently), you can stream the series in its entirety with a Peacock subscription.

Rick And Morty's Dan Harmon Explained The Big Reasons For Season 7's Ending, And They May Hint At The Series' Future

mick.joest@CinemaBlend.com (Mick Joest) — Sun, 30 Jun 2024 22:38:11 +0000

It feels like it wasn't that long ago that Adult Swim announced a massive renewal for Rick and Morty, but we're far closer to the end of deal than its beginning. As fans wonder whether or not Season 10 will be the final season, Dan Harmon is citing his reasoning behind Season 7's ending, and it's a two-fold answer that presumably speaks to the animated hit's future.

Harmon recently spoke to Variety about many things, including the Season 7 finale. The episode ended up being an emotional favorite of CinemaBlend's Nick Venable but has garnered criticism elsewhere feeling like a reset after so many consequential events happened in previous Season 7 episodes. The co-creator spoke of the necessity of a reset being tied to the behind-the-scenes drama with Justin Roiland's firing, with the hopes of giving Rick and Morty Season 8 a chance to start fresh without shedding viewers. In his words:

I think a reset is a good way of looking at it. We had so much behind the scenes drama that I think we didn’t need a lot of irony and challenge on the screen narratively. I think the experiment became, can we accomplish the show moving forward? Can the fans not lose their favorite show, not be distracted by any of the turbulence?

Rather than wait until the end of the season, Rick and Morty delivered its most jaw-dropping canon moments midway through the season, particularly when Rick C-137 finally killed his nemesis Rick Prime. The season-capping "Fear No Mort" was relatively tame in comparison, feeling more like a standard series adventure with no long-term consequences outside of perhaps Morty's catharsis. I would imagine the episode would have received more universal acclaim had it not been the season finale, but I can understand Harmon's reason for ending with it.

And I grasp that impetus to end things that way even more so after reading Dan Harmson's second reason, which points to the future of Rick and Morty. The co-creator has worked on a lot of TV in his career, and noted the importance of what a Season 7 story reset sets up for future installments.

There was also another important reason to reset, which is we’re anticipating doing a lot more of these. This was always designed to be a show that could last thousands of episodes. And you can’t last thousands of episodes if you’re simply going to tell a serialized story about how your protagonist stops being the protagonist. I’ve always been obsessively focused on maintaining modularity, so that the more popular your show gets, the more accessible it is to a hopefully increasing freeway of traffic.

While Dan Harmon can't say anything with certainty about Season 11 and beyond, it sounds like he's expecting Rick and Morty to score another renewal down the line, presumably with Adult Swim. I'm not exactly surprised, considering the series remains very popular and has landed in the conversation for the best animated shows of all time, on top of being one of TV's most merchandised series. Provided Harmon & Co. are willing to keep the series going, it seems like a no-brainer for network execs to keep the door open.

As part of the reset, Rick and Morty did make one big change that I'm hoping will be addressed in the near future. Mr. Poopybutthole used a stolen portal gun to murder a version of himself in another universe so that he could have his wife and son back. This dark path for the beloved character could result in a serialized arc told across sporadic references in one or more eps each season. That's part of the fun of Rick and Morty; I can never quite tell where things are headed!

Rick and Morty Season 8 isn't premiering on Adult Swim until 2025, though with the upcoming anime spinoff bringing surprising characters into its first season, I'm good with waiting on that to see what this new series has to offer.

Rick And Morty Writers Are In The Final Stretch Of Adult Swim Deal, So Will The Show Continue Past Season 10?

Eric Eisenberg — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 02:29:00 +0000

More Rick And Morty!

15 Best Rick And Morty Episodes, Ranked

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Rick And Morty: 6 Key Things We Know About Rick Sanchez's Past

Back in 2018, it felt like Rick And Morty was set up to run forever. In the wake of the show's third season, Adult Swim opted to make a long term commitment to the sci-fi comedy series by ordering 70 more episodes, and the end of that deal seemed an eternity away. Six years later, however, the show has now aired its seventh season, which means there are only three guaranteed seasons left.

Fans find themselves wondering what the future of Rick And Morty looks like once the 2018 contract is fulfilled... and it's a mystery.

During a recent interview with series co-creator Dan Harmon, Variety asked about where things stand with the show in relation to its epic renewal. Because episodes are written faster than they are aired, the finish line is now in sight for the Rick And Morty's writers and animators. Harmon explained,

We’re in the homestretch. We’re always one to two seasons ahead of what’s happening on screen in the writers’ room. Roughly it’s around ten episodes left to write before we will be done with the 70. So, my job right now is to be working on the final 10 of that order. As for the question of what has everybody seen, where are they at? I think that puts them at 20 left.

You may note that timing puts the filmmakers of Rick And Morty in an interesting place. If the end of the 70-episode renewal (a.k.a. Season 10) is going to be the last run of the Adult Swim show, that means that the final 10 episodes will have a certain amount of pressure on them to wrap things up in a satisfying way. But if there is hope to continue on and make a Season 11, the assignment is completely different.

For what it's worth, it doesn't seem like Dan Harmon is feeling much pressure.

Dan Harmon Teases That The Future Of Rick And Morty Remains Open-Ended

The trade publication specifically asked what the plan is beyond the 70-episode order of Rick And Morty, and while Dan Harmon couldn't make any kind of specific comment about a plan, his chosen words make it sound like the series finale isn't coming up relatively soon. Said Harmon,

Plenty of time to figure it out. With something this satisfying for this many people, conversations like that happen all the time. And I would anticipate an announcement one way or the other about the future at some point in the future... I don’t want to get in trouble! But there will probably be news to come.

As noted in the interview, Dan Harmon is currently splitting most of his time working on Rick And Morty and Community: The Movie, which got the green light from Peacock about two years ago (and no, it's not Donald Glover's fault that development is taking so long). Rick And Morty Season 8 is on the way and likely coming in late 2024, but an official premiere date has not yet been announced.

You can keep track of all the shows that are set to launch between now and the end of the year with our 2024 TV Premiere Calendar.

'Stop Haranguing Him!': Community's Dan Harmon Defends Donald Glover While Sharing Update On The Peacock Movie's Status

Eric Eisenberg — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 00:50:01 +0000

More Community!

Community: 10 Major Behind The Scenes Events That Have Happened

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11 Community Inside Jokes That Are Still Completely Brilliant

It's been nearly two years since Peacock gave the green light to Community: The Movie, based on the beloved NBC/Yahoo! Screen sitcom that ran from 2009 to 2015, but development on the project has been slow. As for why this is the case, many fans have been quick to put the blame on Donald Glover, who is presently one of the most exciting talents in the entire entertainment industry – but according to Community creator Dan Harmon, that's an erroneous assumption, and he wants people to stop pointing the finger.

Harmon provided the latest update about the development of Community: The Movie during a recent interview with Variety, and he made a specific point of addressing rumors about delays being tied to Donald Glover's schedule and availability. Harmon wants to shut all of that talk down, telling the trade,

I saw where Donald Glover said he’s hearing from fans that they think he’s the reason the movie’s not happening sooner. I immediately wanted to get on my Instagram and say, ‘Stop yelling at Donald! Do you want to scare this guy off?’ He wants to do the movie, stop haranguing him! He’s not the reason, no single human being could be the reason for delays. The frustrating thing is that our engine moves so slowly and so easily gets derailed and stuck. The timescale is so different for us than for the fans. The fans have 900 times more anxiety per minute to feel than than this machine that ultimately gives them their movie.

It takes a whole lot of people to make a movie, and there are a lot of moving parts that have to line up in the studio system in order for a project to move forward. Obviously the availability of one of the film's stars is going to have an impact, but it ultimately is just one cog in the larger machine.

As for what Dan Harmon is doing with the extra development time, he's using it to try and make Community: The Movie even better than it currently has the potential to be. Harmon has co-written a script with Andrew Guest (who was a writer on Community during the show's first two seasons), and he's using the extended pre-production period to polish things up and produce a final draft:

I’m going to use the time that we have to do a final pass on this thing that hopefully makes everybody real excited and happy. In the meantime, can you call them delays when I mean, did we have a shoot day? The engine is still moving.

He makes a point: if there has never been an official release date for Community: The Movie, let alone one that has been pushed back, is it really fair to say that the project has been "delayed"?

In addition to Donald Glover, Joel McHale, Danny Pudi, Alison Brie, Gillian Jacobs, Yvette Nicole-Brown, Jim Rash and Ken Jeong are all set to reprise their original roles from Community. While little is known about the plot of the film, Glover has let it slip to The Hollywood Reporter that a Greendale Community College reunion is involved that will see Abed Nadir (Pudi) directing a movie he sees as his magnum opus (not exactly hard to see how things can get wonderfully meta with that story.

Community: The Movie doesn't presently have a release date, but it will be available to stream with a Peacock subscription whenever it does finally get made. Stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for all of the latest updates about the project.

'They’re Kind Of Like Ernie And Bert': Rick And Morty's Dan Harmon Explains How The Main Characters' Relationship Truly Changed With Season 7 Finale

Eric Eisenberg — Fri, 01 Mar 2024 02:27:00 +0000

SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for the finale of Rick And Morty Season 7. If you have not yet watched the episode, continue at your own risk!

While it has nothing to do with Evil Morty (who will eventually return) or Rick's complicated backstory, the end of Rick And Morty Season 7 offers a major development for the beloved Adult Swim show. By entering The Fear Hole, Morty is (albeit in circuitous fashion) forced to confront his greatest anxiety: that his existence means nothing to his grandfather and that should he die, he'll just be replaced by another Morty from another universe. Because of this terrifying therapy session, the dynamic between Morty and Rick has been altered, and series co-creator Dan Harmon says that it will impact stories going forward.

Variety recently spoke with Harmon about "Fear No Mort," the latest Rick And Morty season finale. Discussing where the episode leaves the titular characters at the end of the story, he explained,

"I think the biggest fetish for me was making sure that it felt like a symmetrical inversion of Morty becoming indoctrinated into absolute nihilism by burying his body. That’s why we wanted to do the same needle drop, because this Rick is now just as lost in an emotional sense as Morty was in a philosophical sense at that moment."

For those who are a bit rusty on their Rick And Morty history, Dan Harmon is referring back to the consequential sixth episode of the show: "Rick Potion #9." Fans will remember that as the episode where the "heroes" managed to turn everyone in the world into "Cronenberg" monsters, they and had to leave their universe and take up residence in another. The only way to accomplish this switch was to replace a multiverse variant of the duo that had died, and Morty has long been traumatized from his experience burying his own body.

While Rick from Universe C-137 is the Rickest Rick Of Them All, Morty has long known at the back of his mind that there are infinite Mortys from the multiverse who could immediately start sidekicking for his grandfather should he be left behind. Now that Morty has a full recognition of that fear, it's going to impact his relationship with his grandfather. Harmon continued,

"What we’re assuming with this story is this concept that we’ve fallen back on many times where Rick considers Morty replaceable. So, this is kind of a final step in turning them into a partnership. It’s certainly not an equal partnership in every way, but they’re friends, they’re roommates — they’re kind of like Ernie and Bert."

Along with the escalating mayhem being instigated by Mr. Poopybutthole, it will be fascinating to see how things develop from this point forward, and the wait is now on for Rick And Morty Season 8. The next run of episodes unfortunately doesn't have a release date yet, but fans can distract themselves from the wait by getting a Max subscription and rewatching the existing seven seasons.

Rick And Morty's Showrunnners Confirm Major Character Will Return After Season 7, And That Seems Like Terrible News For The Heroes

mick.joest@CinemaBlend.com (Mick Joest) — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 03:55:00 +0000

Rick and Morty Season 7 featured one massive curveball, as a character that fans expected to be in the series for the long haul met a sudden end. Dan Harmon told viewers not to worry after the show killed off Rick Prime, and that there was more story to tell. We now have an idea of how the canonical storylines may continue after the confirmation that Evil Morty will be in the mix in future seasons.

Evil Morty helped Rick-C137 defeat Rick Prime, and when they parted ways, he returned to his part of the universe free from Rick's influence. Given the way the scene was shown, it seemed his story was done, but showrunner Scott Marder told Variety that isn't the case:

"We can expect to see him in the future. We certainly have plans and grand designs with him, for sure."

As a Rick and Morty fan tracking all we know about Season 8, this is fascinating to me. When Evil Morty left, he took with him the knowledge of the Omega Device, which gave him the ability to kill every Rick in existence across the multiverse. The villain said that doing so would be more of a headache than just returning to his peaceful pocket of the universe, but he warned both heroes not to try to bother him or he might reconsider.

15 Best Rick And Morty Episodes, Ranked

(Image credit: Adult Swim)

These are the best.

I've rewatched Season 7 with my Max subscription, and truthfully, I suspected Evil Morty would eventually make his way back into the story. With Rick Prime gone, Rick-C137 seemed directionless in what he would do next after completing the mission he had been on for years. Rick, in the early seasons, wouldn't allow anyone to have an edge on him, especially someone he knows is a threat.

What I'm saying is that if Evil Morty is back in the picture, I'd imagine it's because Rick poked the bear, needing to find a purpose after Rick Prime. Then again, I could be completely off base, and the villain is back in the mix after Mr. Poopybutthole's meddling in the timeline. Rick and Morty has proven it's good at keeping viewers on their toes, so maybe it's best not to assume anything about future seasons.

In addition to the return of Evil Morty, the showrunners also revealed episodic adventures will still be in the mix of seasons as well. I know I would love to see more stories that dive into Rick's past or maybe a crossover with the upcoming anime spinoff. Even if that stuff doesn't happen, I can at least feel comfort in knowing the show is still going strong after the massive shakeups headed into Season 7.

As mentioned, those wishing to re-watch Rick and Morty Season 7 can now do so over on Max. I would highly recommend doing that, as there were quite a few things that I missed the first time around, probably because I'm fighting sleep staying up to watch new episodes during the season.

Why Rick And Morty Fans Shouldn't Worry About What's Next After That Game-Changing Episode

mick.joest@CinemaBlend.com (Mick Joest) — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 00:26:11 +0000

Warning! The following contains spoilers for the Rick and Morty episode "Unmortricken." Read at your own risk!

There was a promise that Rick and Morty Season 7 would pick up after a slow start, and hot damn, that promise was fulfilled. After Season 6 revealed that Rick-C137 was on a vengeful hunt for Rick Prime over the death of his wife, it seemed like the Adult Swim series was setting up an eventual endgame that would wrap up years later. Little did we know that Rick, with the help of Evil Morty, would capture his nemesis and kill him midway through Season 7. Fans may worry about what could possibly come next after such a big moment, but co-creator Dan Harmon recently explained why he isn't concerned about delivering a game-changing moment so early.

Harmon had a lot to say about the future of Rick and Morty in a recent interview with Variety, and of course, the wild Succession-esque twist of killing Rick Prime randomly midway through Season 7. It felt like the end of a major canonical arc that could've gone on for seasons, so to see it end so abruptly may give some fans pause. The co-creator explained he wasn't worried about the early reveal impacting the show too heavily or for it to run out of ideas anytime soon:

This show, the least of its concerns is wearing out its canonical credit card. If the show was going to be destroyed, it would have been destroyed by any of the other Godzilla-sized problems that have happened to it, including pandemics, writers’ strikes, and other things.

Rick and Morty has overcome a lot, and yes, it's impressive the series weathered the storm of co-creator Justin Roiland's firing so well in Season 7 that I don't even think about the voice recasting. With that said, was the decision to end the Rick Prime story so early a mistake, given it now has to find additional content or a great decision by a series that has always strived to shake things up?

Ultimately, that will be up for fans to decide in the future, but it sounds like Rick and Morty is certainly headed in an interesting direction post-Rick Prime. Dan Harmon talked about where the journey has gone on so far and what this latest event sets up for the scientist going forward:

This is how far we’ve come with Rick’s journey. He is now the one who is existentially isolated. He is the one that doesn’t feel like he fits in the universe around him. Which puts him on the same level as a 14-year-old boy learning there’s multiple universes 10 show-years earlier.

Rick's defeat of Rick Prime ended a journey that he started long before the series officially began, and it seemed like the character wasn't satisfied after completing his mission. No doubt Rick likely hoped to find some measure of solace in exacting revenge for his wife and daughter's death, and if he didn't get that, his response is understandable. Now that the journey is over, what does he do now?

(Image credit: Adult Swim)

15 Best Rick And Morty Episodes, Ranked

In addition to that question, we'll have to see how Rick can reconcile no longer being the strongest person in the multiverse. Evil Morty used Rick Prime's tech to create a device that granted him the power to take out anyone and anything if he willed it.

Evil Morty told the heroes he had no intention of ever using it, assuming he was left alone in his space beyond Rick's influence. Can Rick handle being told what not to do, or will he eventually make a move to take out the eye-patched version of his grandson?

These questions alone show that Rick and Morty still have a lot of ways it can go in future seasons. Sure, future generations will be in for a shock when watching with their Max subscription, and Rick unexpectedly pounds the main villain's face to a mashed mess, but perhaps by then, there will be something even more shocking in a future season to look forward to. For now, though, what a bonkers twist, and given what we know about Season 7, it could get even wilder.

Rick and Morty airs new episodes on Adult Swim on Sundays at 11:00 p.m. ET. There are only a handful of episodes left in the season, so strap in for what could be a very unexpected ending to the latest season.

Rick And Morty Bosses On Rick Prime And Evil Morty's Return Sharing Vibes With HBO's Succession And The Wire

Nick Venable — Mon, 13 Nov 2023 21:10:42 +0000

Major spoilers below for the latest episode of Rick and Morty Season 7, so be warned if you haven’t yet watched!

Just when you thought it was safe to to continue making comparative references between Rick C-137 and Moby Dick’s Captain Ahab, Rick and Morty dove back into canon-heavy waters with “Unmortricken” and shockingly gave its most vengeful character the means and opportunity to brutally take down his white(haired) whale, Rick Prime. Coupled with the return of Evil Morty, this midseason installment seemingly capped off one of the series’ biggest plotlines, drawing comparative lines between it and HBO hits Succession and The Wire.

Co-creator Dan Harmon and showrunner Scott Marder knew they were dropping a doozy on fans already with this ep’s conflict, and that the surprise would be even more palpable in the middle of everything, as opposed to “Unmortricken” serving as a finale. (Adult Swim’s president teased major canon dropping midseason, but I hadn’t expected this.) In that way, the episode’s timing was on the same wavelength as the jaw-dropping fourth episode of Succession’s final season, even though it was conceived and in the works ahead of that ep’s airing on HBO. Here’s how Marder explained it to Variety:

That episode would have been a series finale on a lot of shows, and I liked that it was just an episode in the middle of one of our seasons. We move at a really crazy pace. . . . When Succession did it I was like, ‘Ah, damn! Animation takes so long!’

It has to be a unique jab to a TV writer's brain when an idea they have ends up getting utilized by another series (or movie) sooner than the writer's own project can. Not that anyone would have assumed Rick and Morty snipped its ideas from Succession, considering the Season 7 scripts all pre-date the lengthy animation process and post-production duties. But seeing any another series pulling off a giant story-flipping death in the middle of its yearly cycle, much less one that can be streamed with the same Max subscription, definitely deserves a "Damn!" reaction, if not a stronger one.

At least Rick and Morty can say it had the more violent and depraved midseason death, amirite?

(Image credit: Adult Swim)

Just so all fans are clear: Rick Prime's death doesn't mean the show is coming to a halt anytime soon, since there are still multiple seasons left to go in Adult Swim's giant 7-season order. Plus, Evil Morty now has the Omega device that could feasibly kill off every character fans have grown to love and/or hate over the hears. (Or in Jerry's case, a gross concoction of both feelings.)

Speaking of Evil Morty, having him return in the same episode as Rick Prime took this episode into blockbuster territory, even if the eyepatch-wearing foe quasi-teamed up with the protagonists instead of serving as another threat. But that was part of the point, with Dan Harmon comparing it to the layered social structure at the heart of The Wire's more dangerous neighborhoods. In his words:

I thought that was a great idea to lean into. It gave me vibes of The Wire — learning throughout the first season that there’s different flavors of bad guy, and then you get that satisfaction of watching your favorite drug dealers against the one that had absolutely proven himself to be a meritless sociopath. That idea of team ups where it’s not as simple, as saccharine as, ‘I’ll put on a white hat, you put on a white hat. Let’s go after the guy with black hat.’

In the end, Evil Morty aided in Rick Prime's demise, but with the rest of humanity potentially paying the cost, now that the emotionally stunted villain has more power than ever. Expect that power to loom large again in, say, 9 or 10 episodes.

How To Watch Rick And Morty Season 7 And Stream New Episodes Weekly From Anywhere

Will "Unrickmorten" enter into the annals of the best Rick and Morty episodes? That somber ending alone makes me think it will, and remembering Rick Prime getting the snot beat out of him only bolsters that confidence. But now let's see how Rick handles himself in the more standalone episodes, knowing that his arch nemesis has been eradicated.

Rick And Morty's Dan Harmon Shares Candid Thoughts On Fan Reactions To Justin Roiland's Replacements

Nick Venable — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 19:13:28 +0000

Now that we’re four episodes into Rick and Morty’s seventh season, it almost feels quaint to look back at all the worries about how the Adult Swim mega-hit would survive losing and recasting co-creator Justin Roiland. The new episodes kicked off with multiple new voice actors in Ian Cardoni and Harry Belden, who portray the respective titular characters, and despite some of the fandom falling back on disappointed hot takes, the relatively smooth transition has been embraced (or at least tolerated) on the whole. And even though Dan Harmon has taught himself not to seek out audience reactions online, he shared his thoughts on the recasting feedback he’s been privy to.

(Image credit: Adult Swim)

15 Best Rick And Morty Episodes, Ranked

Speaking with Gizmodo about the Season 7 journey so far, Harmon seemed pleased to see that fans have by and large given Rick and Morty’s creative team the benefit of the doubt when it comes to recasting the various characters that needed voices in the aftermath of Justin Roiland’s firing in January 2023. He’s definitely aware of those with more hyperbolically negative takes, but isn’t allowing those voices to rise to the top of the slush pile. In his words:

I think the silent majority and healthy majority are like, ‘Okay, this is as good as you can manage. The characters are still alive. That was the goal from the outset; fans of the show, consider them fans of the characters, and they just want to continue to watch the show and feel that those characters are still alive, and it seems that we were successful in that mission. I think that there is an air of religious zealotry to the people that are insisting that the voices are somehow unignorably, catastrophically different. I think that most people seem to be saying, ‘Okay, it sounds like Rick, and it sounds like Morty, let’s proceed.’

The Internet has never been known as a place for subtlety, and Dan Harmon is on the money with his assessment of fans who think that Rick's voice being slightly off every so often means that all of the jokes, sci-fi plotting, and other actors' efforts are all pointless, and why don't we all just go dive into a wood chipper because nothing can get worse than an adult-animated comedy!! Ahem. Those who adhere to such viewpoints presumably aren't all that educated on how TV shows are made.

Those kinds of overdramatized takes keep Harmon away from a lot of the more positive critiques and reactions to Rick and Morty, in the way that one bad apple can spoil an entire orchard. Here's how he put it:

Even within individual comment sections, let alone separate venues, the only rule is complete polarity: everything has to be the absolute worst or the absolute best. Even people that say something’s mediocre have to say it with such vehemence that you would think their blood vessels were bursting. So unfortunately, it’ll dictate the course of my entire day if I see the wrong thing, which means that even though there’s a bunch of important stuff out there to see, I kind of have to have a general rule that I’m not googling anything about this show.

Thankfully for his sanity, Harmon's friends and colleagues do reach out and send him examples of viewer praise and similarly pumped-up reactions from the fandom. So, for instance, he's been told that fans were loving this season's fourth installment, which featured the darkest spaghetti dinners known to mankind and beyond. (Check out what writer Heather Anne Campbell shared about the episode's deep origins.) Plus, the Community creator also praised the Rick and Morty subreddit for being a bastion of sanity and level-headed conversations amidst the cacophony of social media.

Rick and Morty airs every Sunday night on Adult Swim at 11:30 p.m. ET, and is available to stream with a Max subscription.

Rick And Morty Writer On The Deep Idea Behind The Super-Disturbing Spaghetti Dinner Ep And That Emotional Montage

Nick Venable — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 18:35:44 +0000

Spoilers below for the latest episode of Rick and Morty, so be warned if you haven’t yet had a taste of this scrumptiousness.

Rick And Morty Season 7 Revived One Of The Show’s Best Gags In Episode 3, And Now I'm Hoping It'll Be Used More Often

For all that Rick and Morty may have been light on lore-building narratives in the first half of Season 7, (with more directly canonical adventures promised by Adult Swim’s boss, the show certainly hasn’t dropped the (meat)ball on delivering moments that are as thought-provoking as they are bile-provoking. The hyper-dark episode “That’s Amorte” delved into cannibalism, food ethics, suicide, and interplanetary empathy, making for quite the surprisingly buffet of emotional and physical responses. The ep’s stellar writer Heather Anne Campbell explained the idea behind the spaghetti dinner story, which will no doubt be bouncing around the ol’ noodle for days to come..

In “That’s Amorte,” the Smith family’s enjoyment of Rick’s non-Italian entree is mostly reversed by the gutsy reveal that the so-called spaghetti and sauce actually come from the corpses of a near-human alien race whose innards turn into an edible delight when they take their own life. And that’s just the opening gambit, with the story taking unexpected turns while ramping up the shrewd chaos. Speaking to Variety, Campbell explained the impetus behind putting the Rick and Morty microscope on where the things we adore come from. In her words:

There’s so many different ways in which we are barricaded from the truth of everything that we enjoy, and I think that the puzzle of being alive is how to reconcile that. When a wolf eats a rabbit the wolf’s not, like, worried about it. It is a very specific experience to being human, to being conscious of something in a way that nothing else in the animal kingdom seems to have to digest.

That capsule of an idea would be an interesting one to see adapted by an assortment of TV shows, but I can’t imagine any of them would deliver the message in the quite same sharp and horrifying ways as Rick and Morty did. And not just because it would be harder for live-action series to pull off giant blood-soaked colanders awaiting jumpers in the waters beneath bridges.

R&M’s co-executive producer Heather Anne Campbell, who also co-hosts the excellent video game podcast Get Played, also addressed the inspiration for the genuinely emotional and poignant memory montage that finally convinced Morty to stop eating the spaghetti.

What was most important to me about that sequence is that when we see those montages of people’s lives in movies, they always follow a very standard arc. Interested in a thing, gets a job at the thing, makes the thing. And life is not not at all like that. It is a huge number of detours and disappointments that make your life; it’s not a direct path. It’s like a river with a bunch of branches.

The character’s life-before-his-eyes montage certainly wasn’t a highlight reel in the traditional sense, as it told a story of young love that evolved and survived a lifetime, though not all in one swoop, with fighting, death, other relationships and more as obstacles in their path. It was easily one of the sci-fi comedy’s biggest heart-tuggers, and that emotional spin could be enough to put “That’s Amorte” in the annals of Rick and Morty’s best episodes ever. And if it inspires an actual line of Morty-branded canned spaghetti, that can only help. Or wait, did I mean hurt? One of those.

It doesn’t take the transmogrified brains of an alien species to understand how to watch and stream Rick and Morty, with new episodes airing Sunday nights on Adult Swim at 11:30 p.m. ET, and streaming with a Max subscription.

Rick And Morty Bosses Explain Why They Cast Multiple Actors To Take Over Justin Roiland’s Characters, And Why Soundalikes Were Key

Nick Venable — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 17:43:19 +0000

Mild spoilers below for anyone who didn’t watch Rick and Morty Season 7’s premiere, so be warned!

As much as Rick and Morty season premieres are always as highly anticipated as can be for an Adult Swim drop, the fervor hit a different pitch ahead of Season 7, with the installment “How Poopy Got His Poop Back” being the first to air without its co-creator and former star Justin Roiland, who was fired in January over previous charges of domestic violence and a string of sexual misconduct accusations from various females. Dan Harmon and current showrunner Scott Marder had to then make some difficult decisions about the animated comedy’s future, which led to the replacement casting of not just two new leads — Ian Cardoni as Rick and Harry Belden as Morty — but also another new voice actor as the fan-favorite Mr. Poopybutthole.

In an interview with THR, the creative pair’s first to fully address the behind-the-scenes changes, Harmon and Marder talked out the ups and downs of having to replace such a core part of a hit series at a point when the writers are already deep into breaking stories for Season 9. When asked whether the original plan was to fill out the Roiland-voiced characters with separate actors for each, the showrunner confirmed that was indeed the goal, with the idea of not wanting to run new cast members ragged. In his words:

I did. There were different schools of thought. For sheer quality of life, it’d be easier for the amount of work required for both characters. We watched it over the years wear down on Roiland’s voice. It felt unfair to do that to someone.

A completely understandable decision to make for someone in a position of authority. Roiland was as prolific a voice actor as could be within the world of Rick and Morty, not to mention his video games and other series, and is known for going off on improvised tangents, not always to the pleasure of the writers whose scripts reportedly weren’t being adhered to. In any case, those familiar with how much time Roiland spent on the mic were the most suited to figure out how best to delegate the roles and duties. In the end, having two different talents in the parts made the most sense considering what would be expected from them.

For the most part, Dan Harmon backed away from the recasting process, as he’d previously shared it was difficult as someone whose friendship with Roiland soured due to the show itself, with the series also reportedly used by the fired star as a way to personally connect with younger fans. As far as the general replacement ideas went, the Community creator spoke to the notion that publicly playing up the casting reveals would have been a disservice to fans being able to suspend disbelief concerning behind-the-curtain issues. As he put it:

In retrospect, it’s also smart because we want the fan experience to continue with as little disruption as possible. In a weird way, catering to the idea that there’s been a replacement of a single human being — an auteur — is going to play into the disruption factor. We really want people to keep believing these characters are real.

It’s not too hard to imagine that the Rick and Morty team might have wondered how hard it would be to make it all the way to the Season 7 premiere without ever letting fans hear what Cardoni and Belden sounded like as the grandfather and grandson. In the end, Adult Swim did release a wacky trailer with the new voices, which fans obviously had opinions on from the very first millisecond of footage. Merder & Co. did achieve the goal of not releasing the new actors’ names ahead of the premiere, as a way of further dampening the kayfabe, as it were.

Were Major Celebrities Considered To Take Over For Rick And Morty?

Though the booze-fueled chicanery throughout the seventh season premiere was bolstered by a surprise guest-starring role from Hugh Jackman (awkward wedding photo reference and all), it sounds like there wasn’t ever a real chance of Rick and Morty following along in Solar Opposites’ footsteps by casting a well-known actor or two. (Dan Stevens replaced Roiland as the Hulu series’ Korvo.) After Dan Harmon joked about Elijah Wood rabidly attempting to woo his way into the Morty role, he and Marder agreed that landing a household name wasn’t nearly as important as finding actors who could bridge the gap while drawing as little audible attention to the switch-up as possible. According to the showrunner:

We never sincerely went down that road. It was explored right at the heart of things at the very beginning. I always try to look at it from a fan’s perspective: Imagine Homer Simpson sounding different. I would have been instantly out. As much as I love this show, I felt like it needed to be exactly the same.

Even as a Solar Opposites fan who still enjoyed the heck out of Dan Stevens’ arrival in Season 4, I can attest to that show’s premise more naturally allowing for a character’s voice to completely change, while it would have been far more of an ear-sore for R&M, especially when it comes to repeats airing out of order. So even though the premiere’s audience was split over how successful the new actors were, that balance might have been far more one-sided with stunt casting involved.

Check out Harmon and Marder talking plot points for the premiere in the BTS video below.

Rick and Morty airs Sunday nights on Adult Swim at 11:30 p.m. ET, and can be streamed with a Max subscription.

Rick And Morty's Dan Harmon Says Zack Snyder Wants To Help Make A Movie Happen. His Idea May be Jokey, But I'm All In

Adam Holmes — Wed, 11 Oct 2023 21:12:07 +0000

10 years ago, Rick & Morty premiered on Adult Swim, and all this time later, it remains one of the Cartoon Network programming block’s most popular shows, with Rick & Morty Season 7 just days away from premiering. As things currently stand, the animated series is guaranteed another three seasons of 10 episodes each, and there’s also been talk over the years about bringing these characters to the big screen. According to series co-creator Dan Harmon, Zack Snyder wants to help make a Rick & Morty movie happen, and while Harmon’s idea for the filmmaker’s involvement may be jokey, I’d still be up for such a collaboration.

While speaking with THR, Harmon recalled how Zack Snyder, the director of movies like 300, Man of Steel and Army of the Dead once set up a meeting with him at Warner Bros. to discuss the potential of a Rick & Morty movie. However, the showrunner clarified that Snyder didn’t want to sit in the director’s chair on such a project, but merely wanting to provide assistance in making it happen. As Harmon explained, and then joked about how a Snyder-helmed Rick & Morty movie would look:

Not him saying, ‘I get to do it,’ or anything like that. He was totally a super fan and was just like, ‘Is there any way I can help get that movie started by using my Snyder-ness?’ So, the Rick and Morty movie is coming as soon as Zack Snyder gets back from his vacation, because I want to start with a Snyder cut of that movie and then I want to do the director’s cut of a Snyder cut release, so we can just have a six-hour Rick and Morty movie and three hours of it is in black and white.

Dan Harmon’s obviously having some good fun over the idea of a Rick & Morty movie being realized through the kind of lens that saw Zack Snyder’s Justice League being released to Max subscribers in 2021, and a black-and-white cut following not long after. Exaggeration aside though, a Snyder-directed Rick & Morty movie sounds intriguing to me. Granted, it couldn’t be as serious as his usual cinematic fare, but with Harmon by his side ensuring the trademark Rick & Morty vibe remained intact, this could make for a cool feature-length event.

Rick And Morty's Dan Harmon Explains Why He Wasn't Big Part Of Justin Roiland's Recasting, And Why He's Kept Silent About Former Colleague

Nick Venable — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 15:36:09 +0000

Dan Harmon spent a chunk of his career as one of TV’s more outspoken creators and showrunners, but reversed course in recent years after past transgressions (and particularly icky and offensive online sketches) came back to haunt him. And as his merchandising monolith co-creation Rick and Morty grew in popularity, it was his comedy collaborator Justin Roiland whose behavior in and out of the workplace made headlines, culminating in domestic violence charges and a host of sexual assault accusations coming to light in 2023. As the Adult Swim hit readies its Season 7 premiere with new voice actors replacing the since-fired Roiland, Harmon has broken his silence about it all.

Rick And Morty Season 7: Release Date And Everything Else We Know

For his first all-encompassing public profile in several years, Dan Harmon spoke with THR about his current situation as it compares to where he was at a decade prior while still in the throes of being rehired on Community, and reflected on the calamitous early seasons on Rick and Morty that led to his falling out with Roiland.

Dan Harmon On Recasting Justin Roiland For Rick And Morty

Though Justin Roiland’s felony charges were later dropped over insufficient evidence, the animator and video game developer had already been ousted from Adult Swim, and was also fired from his other TV and streaming series. The studio revealed that the sci-fi comedy would be recasting for the various roles that Roiland voiced, following a point when it seemed like the powers that be could actually renege on the massive episode order from years ago. Fans were finally able to hear the new (and currently unidentified) stars when the Season 7 trailer was released, and reactions have been largely positive.

Dan Harmon says he chose not to be actively involved with seeking out a Roiland soundalike for the casting process, saying it was a matter of denial, due to the conflicting goals involved. In his words:

It’s all just sad because the goal is for it to be indistinguishable, at the same time, it would be absurd to suddenly decide that the entire foundation of your creative project was, oh, coincidentally, unimportant.

Having to listen to a variety of voice actors come in and mimic Justin Roiland’s Rick and Morty performances (among other characters) apparently didn’t seem like a positive mental experience for Harmon. Giving due honor to a co-creator’s instantly recognizable character voices while also dismissing his presence and impact in most other ways is not a situation that brings many comparisons to mind from elsewhere in the pop culture sphere. It’s complicated, and it only makes sense for someone like Harmon to have complicated feelings about it.

Dan Harmon Addresses Falling Out With Justin Roiland, And The Accusations

Despite all the ups and downs behind the scenes of Rick and Morty — which centered partly on Justin Roiland taking an affront to Dan Harmon bringing Community writers to the show in its second season — things were reportedly hunky dory once more after Adult Swim set up its 70-episode order in mid-2018. But the happy days soured anew, and the two men essentially ceased communication in 2019, with their personal relationship capping off with a harsh text message exchange that the former Harmontown host addressed, saying:

He said things that he’d never said before about being unhappy, and I remember saying to him the last time we spoke in person, like, ‘I am worried about you, and I don’t know what to do about that except to give you all the string and also just say I’m scared that you’re not going to come back.’ But then this conversation became unprecedentedly confrontational. I think that’s as far as I get to take the story. At that point, we’re no longer both there for it, and it starts to become not only unfair for me to continue but totally uncomfortable because, from there, a friendship goes away, and I still don’t fully understand why.

Fans may never know the specifics of what led to Harmon and Roiland’s seemingly permanent rift, unless they’d somehow reunite and both choose to address the falling-out publicly. After that point, Harmon largely avoided speaking much about Roiland in interviews regarding Rick and Morty, which remained the case through early 2023 after the Solar Opposites co-creator’s charges were filed, and after the initial sexual assault accusations were spread.

But while Harmon maintained that choice for the initial THR interview, he was contacted again days later, following the release of a new report that further detailed past and new allegations from women claiming they were groomed and/or assaulted by Roiland (which his lawyer denied in full soon after), who is said to have used his Rick and Morty clout to attract the accusers. In response to the resurfaced claims, Harmon had this to share:

The easiest thing for me to say about Justin has been nothing. Easy because he isolated so well and easy because I’m nobody’s first choice as a judge of anything or anyone. This is where I’d love to change the subject to myself, to what a piece of crap I’ve been my whole public life. I would feel so safe and comfortable making this about me, but that trick is worthless here and dangerous to others. It’s other people’s safety and comfort that got damaged while I obsessed over a cartoon’s quality. Trust has now been violated between countless people and a show designed to please them. I’m frustrated, ashamed and heartbroken that a lot of hard work, joy and passion can be leveraged to exploit and harm strangers.

Several Rick and Morty staff members have spoken out about Justin Roiland's alleged lack of input on the show in later seasons, claiming he largely just wanted to record lines alone without dealing with writers and oversight. Which obviously plays into the specific humor that's been at the heart of the show's central characters since the beginning. So one has to wonder if and how that will change going forward, with new voice actors who will likely be relying far more on scripts than Roiland supposedly did.

For those who haven't heard the new actors in action yet, check out the trailer below.

Rick and Morty Season 7 will arrive on Adult Swim with its new voices in tow on Sunday, October 15, with eps available to stream with a Max subscription.

Rick And Morty Dropped Its Season 7 Episode Titles In New Video, But I’m Still Waiting On That One Major Reveal

Eric Eisenberg — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 19:12:07 +0000

Who will replace Justin Roiland as the voice of the titular characters and many others on Rick and Morty? That's a question that fans have been asking since Roiland's firing this past January, and the beloved, critically acclaimed Adult Swim series has not yet provided an answer – despite the fact that Season 7 is now just a month and a half away. Hopefully the actor/actors will be named soon, but today we at least have another thing to be excited about, as the official titles and descriptions for the have been revealed for the upcoming run of episodes.

A total of 10 Rick and Morty Season 7 episodes will be released weekly starting on October 15, and the show's official Twitter account has posted a video that previews what fans can expect from the individual adventures. Some of the descriptions are too vague to be meaningful, but a number of them point directly at certain elements that get us excited. Check out the full rundown of titles and descriptions below:

1. “How Poopy Got His Poop Back” - Broh, come out with us. You’re being so boring, dude.

2. “The Jerrick Trap” - Gotta be mindful, broh. Big brain stuff here.

3. “Air Force Wong” - Virginia is for lovers, broh.

4. “That’s Amorte” - Broh, that’s a some good spaghetti.

5. “Unmortricken” - Rick and Morty wilding out, broh. They’re getting up to stuff.

6. “Rickfending Your Mort” - Gotta keep those receipts, dawg.

7. “Wet Kuat Amortican Summer” - High school, broh. Morty and Summer hang out in this one.

8. “Rise Of The Numbericons: The Movie” - Action! Adventure! It’s a whole movie, broh!

9. “Mort: Ragnarick” - Heaven is for real, broh. I saw it, broh, I swear.

10. “Fear No Mort” - Only thing to fear is fear itself, broh.

So what can we glean from these? For starters, it would seem that the Season 7 premiere will put a big focus on Mr. Poopybutthole – who fans will remember was last seen in the Season 6 finale trying to get over his divorce and exercising to excess. It feels safe to assume that "Air Force Wong" will somehow involve therapist Dr. Wong (who is voiced by Susan Sarandon), and there may be riffs on movies including The Parent Trap, Unforgiven, Defending Your Life, Thor: Ragnarok, and Wet Hot American Summer.

Perhaps the most intriguing of all, however, is what's going on with episode 8. The Numbericons were previously featured in the stinger of the second season episode "Get Schwifty," and it's kind of weird that they are coming back, but it's the "The Movie" part that raises the most curiosity. Is the description that it's "a whole movie" accurate, or is it just a joke? Could we be getting a 90 minute adventure, or perhaps is Rise Of The Numbericons: The Movie simply a film that the characters in the show go to see? At present, we have no idea.

You can check out the Rick and Morty episode title reveal video below and see if you can pick up on any subtle clues from the artwork included:

Official episode titles for Rick and Morty S7. New season starts 10/15 on @AdultSwim. #rickandmorty pic.twitter.com/mbKTjP6802August 31, 2023

While we wait for Rick And Morty Season 7 to arrive, keep checking back here on CinemaBlend for the latest updates regarding Justin Roiland's replacement in the cast, and learn about all the shows set to hit the airwaves in the fall with our 2023 TV Premiere Schedule.

After Years Of Waiting, Rick And Morty Creator Dan Harmon's New Show Finally Has A Release Date

mick.joest@CinemaBlend.com (Mick Joest) — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 02:30:41 +0000

There's no shortage of hype regarding Dan Harmon's latest animated series Krapopolis. This next project from the Rick and Morty creator has a great cast attached and was even renewed for Season 3 months ago. That's pretty wild considering the show has yet to officially premiere, but thankfully we finally have a date of when it will arrive.

Fox has waited a long time to debut this new series, but Krapopolis is getting a great lead-in to potentially make up for that. The Greek mythology-inspired series will debut on Sunday, September 24 with a two-episode premiere. The kicker is that it will follow an NFL double-header, and sporting events (especially football) tend to have a sizable live audience. Assuming a bulk of that crowd doesn't hop over to Sunday Night Football on NBC, the series could have a healthy audience ready for its premiere.

After the premiere, Krapopolis will move to its normal time slot at 8:30 p.m. ET on Sundays. The show will be sandwiched between two adult-animation juggernauts: The Simpsons and Bob's Burgers. That's a great time slot for any new animated show, especially one that is already coming in with the hype of being connected to Community and Rick and Morty creator Dan Harmon.

Krapopolis' premiere has been a long time coming for Fox. The animated series was set to premiere in 2022 and then was delayed to May 2023. Of course, now the series is pushed back to September, but it doesn't appear that it will be delayed any further now that there's a premiere date and time set in stone.

Beyond the unique element of being a show about mythical ancient Greece, Krapopolis will also be the first Fox series curated by the blockchain. This means that fans of the show will be able to purchase Krap Chicken NFTs using cryptocurrency which will allow them to influence the show. A video for the feature was released about a year ago, and explained what buyers will get out of being a part of the program:

Prices of the Krap Chicken Fan Pass range from a free mint of options all the way up to a public sale list of $341 USD. This is not required of anyone who wishes to watch the show, though it will be interesting to see just how many viewers jump on board should the series become a hit in the three seasons already promised by Fox.

Dan Harmon's Krapopolis will debut on Fox months after the dismissal of the court case against his Rick And Morty co-creator Justin Roiland for alleged domestic violence. Roiland is not connected with Krapopolis, though I wouldn't be shocked if the controversy was a reason for the show being temporarily shelved. The series will now premiere without that controversy hanging over it by virtue of Harmon's previous working relationship with Roiland.

As mentioned, expect to see the premiere of Krapopolis on Fox on Sunday, September 24, immediately after the conclusion of that day's NFL doubleheader. It's yet another show on the list of upcoming 2023 television series, so be sure to keep an eye peeled as we inch ever closer to the fall season to see what will be returning.

Joel McHale Weighs In On Donald Glover And Chevy Chase's Involvement With The Community Movie, And I'm Loving His Atlanta Joke

Eric Eisenberg — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 00:21:50 +0000

When the Community movie was officially announced last September, fans were quick to notice that a couple names were missing from the list of actors who were confirmed to be a part of the feature. The press release included Joel McHale, Danny Pudi, Alison Brie, Gillian Jacobs, Jim Rash and Ken Jeong as part of the cast, but there was no mention of either Donald Glover or Yvette Nicole Brown. Fortunately, fans were satiated by optimism from show creator Dan Harmon a couple weeks after the announcement, and now Jeff Winger himself has confirmed that Glover will definitely be back for the film as Troy Barnes.

Joel McHale recently discussed the status of the Community movie as a guest on the podcast Let's Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa, and he acknowledged that the project having Donald Glover involved is a big deal. Glover didn't star in the full run of the show (Troy Barnes sailing off into the sunset with LeVar Burton early in Season 5), but audiences will see his story continue in the long-promised film... either with the rest of the Greendale Community College study group or without them. Making reference to Glover's acclaimed FX series that he made after leaving the NBC sitcom, McHale said,

Donald [Glover]'s coming back and that's really important. The fact that Donald's gonna 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. See, it'll just be Donald. It'll just be an episode of Atlanta.

As a die-hard Community fan, obviously getting to see the movie get made is a priority, but, for what it's worth, I certainly wouldn't say no to more of Atlanta beyond the Season 4 finale as a backup plan.

For those who don't recall the details, Troy Barnes left Greendale Community College following the death of Chevy Chase's Pierce Hawthorne. In Pierce's will, Troy was offered the chance to claim a massive inheritance, but the single condition was that he had to complete a sailing voyage around the world. Dan Harmon suggested at San Diego Comic-Con in 2014 that a movie could feature the Community characters rescuing Troy from pirates, but that idea is probably off the table at this point.

In addition to being asked about Donald Glover being in the movie, Joel McHale also addressed whether or not Chevy Chase would be a part of the project – unleashing a tidal wave of sarcasm in the process, referencing behind-the-scenes Community controversy:

Yeah, I don't think so. There wasn't any issues at all when we were making the show.

Chevy Chase's run on Community officially ended after Season 4 (the season that was made following Dan Harmon being fired by NBC), though there was a proverbial hatchet-burying featured in the Season 5 premiere (the season when Harmon came back to the show). Chase did a cameo as Pierce, appearing as a hologram set up as an installation on the Greendale Community College campus. A couple episodes later, in the David Fincher-esque "Basic Intergluteal Numismatics," it was revealed that Pierce had died.

The Community movie, fulfilling the Six Seasons And A Movie "prophecy" from Season 2's "Paradigms of Human Memory," is being developed as an original feature for Peacock – though you presently need either a Netflix subscription or a Hulu subscription if you want to watch all six seasons of the original series. Stay tuned for more updates about the project, which is presently on pause due to the on-going WGA strike.

As Rick And Morty's Justin Roiland Backlash Dies Down, Co-Creator Dan Harmon's Other Show Got Fantastic News

Nick Venable — Thu, 02 Mar 2023 15:44:00 +0000

The somewhat insular world of TV animation was thrust into the spotlight in quite the negative way earlier this year when Rick and Morty co-creator was fired from the Adult Swim series (and other projects) over a domestic violence complaint filed by an ex-girlfriend in 2020. While the backlash over that controversial situation has subsided, with the voice actor’s legal team still claiming he’s innocent, his former creative partner Dan Harmon earned quite a bit of good news for his other big TV show that exists far outside the portal-opening worlds of Rick and Morty.

It’s been nearly three whole years since Dan Harmon first signed a deal with Fox for the creation of another wild and wacky animated series, Krapopolis, which was initially meant to debut on the network in 2022. An actual premiere date still has yet to be revealed, but Fox just gave Krapopolis another form of fantastic news in the form of an official renewal for Season 3! So before we even get to fully sit down and enjoy this fantastical comedy for the first time, we already have the guarantee that it’ll be part of Fox’s animated lineup for years to come.

Krapopolis’ excellent update was announced at the London Screenings event, with Fox Entertainment’s President of Scripted Programming Michael Thorn at least confirming that the animated comedy will pop up on the network as part of this year’s TV schedule. In his glowing words:

The 2023-24 Season is the perfect launching pad for this highly-anticipated and very funny animated comedy, complete with multiple seasons of epic laughs for fans,” said Thorn. “The more we see from production, the more excited we are about their creativity, story arcs, flawless execution, brilliant voice cast, and ability to pump out episode after episode of astonishing events and outrageous, unexpected hilarity.

Set in an ancient Greece that’s populated by both people and mythical creatures, Krapopolis centers on a dysfunctional family of gods, monsters and humans who attempt to prove their leadership skills by running one of the world’ first cities. To say it all goes smoothly would be to lie profusely. And speaking to Thorn’s claims about the show’s brilliant voice cast, the upcoming series does sport a solid ensemble featuring the following actors:

Richard Ayoade as Tyrannis, the benevolent and mortal King of Krapopolis
Hannah Waddingham as Tyrannis' self-destructive goddess of a mother Deliria
Matt Berry as the oversexed and lazy mantitaur Schlub, Tyrannis' father
Pam Murphy as Stupendous, Tyrannis' half-sister born to Deliria and a cyclops
Duncan Trussel as Hippocampus, Tyrannis' half-brother born to Schlub and a mermaid
Recurring cast: Stephanie Beatrix, Tara Strong, Dove Cameron, Alanna Ubach
Guest cast: Susan Sarandon, Jane Lynch, Dave Franco, Will Forte, Yvette Nicole Brown, Michael Urie, Amber Stevens West

At this point, it’s clearly a good thing that Harmon didn’t bring Justin Roiland in for various voice roles in Krapopolis, or that show would be in the same boat as Rick and Morty by way of having to recast its lead characters. Though it’s not entirely clear what’s kept the animated comedy from hitting the small screen before now, at least we can take comfort in knowing Fox has all the gods-fearing confidence in the world that it’ll be worth keeping on the air for at least three seasons.

At a time when animated projects have been getting canceled and/or booted from their platforms outright — largely at Rick and Morty’s streaming home of HBO Max — Dan Harmon landed a whopper of a great announcement. Now we just have to wait and see which one happens first: Krapopolis debuting on Fox or Rick and Morty solving its Prime Rick mystery.

Community's Dan Harmon Knows Fans Love The Paintball And Dungeons And Dragons Episodes, But Has Good Reason To Steer Clear With Peacock Movie

Adam Holmes — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 00:14:30 +0000

Originally exclaimed by Abed Nadir as his incorrect prediction for how long NBC’s The Cape would last, “six seasons and a movie” was the slogan Community fans used for years to express their own hopes for the Greendale Community College saga. The show pulled off the six seasons part thanks to the final run of episodes that aired on the now-defunct Yahoo! Screen, and earlier this year, it was announced that a Community movie is finally on the way that will premiere exclusively to Peacock subscribers. However, Community creator Dan Harmon has shared his good reason for why this upcoming movie will steer clear of paintball and Dungons & Dragons.

These two games were among Community’s most popular recurring concepts, so fans wouldn’t be faulted for thinking that the Community movie might show a paintball game and/or a Dungeons & Dragons game unfolding, even if they weren’t the focus of the story. But while visiting the latest episode of Six Seasons & A Podcast, Dan Harmon went over why he decided to rule out these games from factoring into the narrative, starting with the following explanation about paintball:

It’s a lot easier for me to rule stuff out than tell you what we’re pursuing. For instance, we go, ‘Do we really think it’d be a good idea to be a paintball episode?’ It’s one of the first things to rule out because it’s the first thing off the top of your head, and that’s an issue with the Community movie concept. We did a lot of episodes where you are joyfully locked into a construct that isn’t a traditional sitcom narrative, but is rather through the lens of David Fincher or Martin Scorsese. There were a lot of special episodes that were kind of like genre homages. The paintball thing was one of them. We tried to do a bunch more paintballs, and they were all perfectly wonderful things to do, but would anything ever capture the joy of the original paintball episode?

Five paintball-centric episodes were produced during Community’s run, the first being Season 1’s “Modern Warfare.” Each time, a campus-wide paintball game would erupt, leaving quite the mess and allowing the show to explore certain genres/put its own spin on popular properties that otherwise wouldn’t be possible, like Westerns and Star Wars. As Dan Harmon sees it, the paintball episodes, particularly the first one, were pulled off so well that he doesn’t need to retread this ground for the Community movie.

Perhaps more importantly, Dan Harmon also talked about how the fact that there have been more school shootings in the years since Community’s paintball episodes aired makes it especially unwise to revisit this concept, which led to him going over why Dungeons & Dragons won’t be used either:

You’re running around with guns in a school, which was never a good idea on TV even back then. How can we do that in a way that’s acceptable? You sit down to write the movie and you’re like, ‘So, we’d do that right?’ Because it’s so emblematic of what made our show special and the triumphs we had, the things we contributed as a show. Or we’d play Dungeons & Dragons for 90 minutes. I kinda gotta rule that out — maybe a better writer wouldn’t.

Dan Harmon also shared that the Community movie would not see Greendale having been shut down post-Season 6, nor would the starring characters come back together via a college reunion. So while Harmon is still wanting to keep exact plot details under wraps, at least fans now know a little bit of what not to expect from this streaming feature. Harmon is co-writing the Community movie with Andrew Guest, and Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Audi, Alison Brie, Jim Rash and Ken Jeong are all officially on board to reprise their roles. Harmon also said in October that it’s likely Donald Glover will return as Troy Barnes, but that there wasn’t an official deal in place to make that happen yet.

CinemaBlend will continue passing along updates on how the Community movie is coming along, including if composer Ludwig Göransson ends up resuming his musical duties. Until then, rewatch Community’s six seasons with either your Netflix subscription or Hulu subscription.

Community's Dan Harmon Discusses The Possibility Of Donald Glover Returning For The Peacock Movie

Adam Holmes — Sat, 08 Oct 2022 01:13:01 +0000

Years before he created and led the FX series Atlanta, and was cast as Lando Calrissian in Solo: A Star Wars Story, Donald Glover was arguably best known for play Troy Barnes in Community. Glover was one of the main cast members during the show’s first four seasons on NBC, but then departed after appearing in Season 5’s first five episodes. Now following the recent announcement that a Community movie is in the works for Peacock subscribers, Community creator Dan Harmon has discussed the possibility of whether Glover will take part in this cinematic reunion.

For years, Community fans championed the “six seasons and a movie” mantra coined by Abed Nadir when he started watching The Cape (spoiler alert, that show only lasted one season). The cult comedy hit the six seasons mark thanks to a final outing on the now-defunct Yahoo! Screen, and now the movie is finally happening close to a decade after Community concluded. While Donald Glover was not listed among the actors who will return, Dan Harmon told Variety that The Martian star, among other Community alums, could still show up. In his words:

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. 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.

Dan Harmon’s correct in saying that it’s hard to imagine a Community movie happening without Donald Glover, and the same goes for Yvette Nicole Brown, who starred as Shirley Bennett for the entirety of Community’s first five seasons, and then made a guest appearance in Season 6. As far as Glover specifically goes, Harmon is confident that he’ll appear in the movie, but the only reason he wasn’t listed in the casting lineup is because his deal to reprise Troy Barnes hasn’t been 100% set in stone. If that’s the case, then all we have to do now is wait for him to be officially announced in the near future so this matter can be put to rest.

When we last saw Troy in the episode “Geothermal Escapism,” he was about to sail around the world with LeVar Burton so that he could receive the shares of Hawthorne Wipes left to him by the late Pierce Hawthorne, played by Chevy Chase. Then in the episode “Analysis of Cork-Based Networking,” a news report revealed that Burton and a “non-celebrity” had been abducted by pirates in the Gulf of Mexico. Rescuing Troy would certainly make a compelling reason for the Greendale gang to get back together, but if he was able to escape captivity on its own, then it still would be nice for him to make his way to the reunion. The same goes for Shirley.

So far Joel McHale, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, Alison Brie, Ken Jeong and Jim Rash are all confirmed to be appearing in the Community movie, and Dan Harmon is writing the script with Andrew Guest. Other potential characters who could pop their head into the movie include Paget Brewster’s Frankie Dart and Keith David’s Elroy Patashnik, both of whom were part of the study group in Season 6. Without any plot details to work with yet, it’s hard to predict what we can expect from the Community movie, although there are certain elements that will hopefully be prioritized. Make sure to read our breakdown of how Community ended to learn where we left off with the main characters in 2015.

Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for more news about the Community movie, and don’t forget to visit our 2022 TV schedule to see what’s currently on the airwaves (including Donald Glover starring in the final season of Atlanta) and what programming is left to premiere this year.

Rick And Morty's Dan Harmon Reveals Surprising Insight Into Season 6 Premiere Twist, Plus An Update On Evil Morty

Nick Venable — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 14:52:19 +0000

Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched Rick and Morty’s Season 6 premiere, so be warned!

In returning to Adult Swim for its sixth season opener, the Emmy-nominated Rick and Morty immediately adhered to the creative team’s revised approach to serialized storytelling, and paid off on the events of Season 5’s bonkers finale. The episode seemed to truly set Rick on course with his grand, overarching mission to take down the Murderer Rick that killed his wife Diane and daughter Beth, all while revealing that Murderer Rick is the true grandfather for Prime Morty. (Complete with a glorious return to the Cronenberg dimension for a quick catch-up with the most badass Jerry possible.) While fans might think this reveal was something that was cooked up by the show’s co-creators very early on in the run, Dan Harmon revealed that was basically the opposite of how it happened.

As Harmon explained it, the episode “Solaricks” and Season 6 as a whole mark a return to form for Rick and Morty, following a season that was dimmed by the 2019 death of producer and guiding light Mike Mendel, who received an on-screen tribute during the premiere. At this point, the co-creator and executive producer freely speaks to the fact that he’s not guiding the ship anymore, with showrunner Scott Marder handling such duties, and Harmon told Variety that the team was midway through figuring the ep’s storyline out before he realized the big reveal that was happening. In his words:

Well, a lot of times I’m very much at the mercy of younger writers who are actually fans of the show, and I trust them to keep track better than I can. But we’ll have lots of confusing conversations, and it was very late in the game when I realized, oh, based on the conversation we’re having right now, it almost sounds like Cronenberg World may, in fact, have been the home of the Original Rick that we’re talking about, which means that he’s actually Morty’s grandfather. And we were a good halfway through writing this story when I realized that. But it’s a committee thing keeping track of this stuff. I wouldn’t trust one person to do it.

I like to think that there’s a mythical tome in the Adult Swim offices that contains an as-easy-to-understand-as-possible breakdown of all Rick and Morty’s alt-dimensions and how everything has connected together over the years. (And yeah, the book probably floats above its pedestal, breaking the laws of physics as we know it.) So it’s amusingly understandable to hear Dan Harmon speaking about his chaotic creation evolving in ways that he’s not immediately privy to.

It has to be an interesting feeling to be shocked by a reveal like Prime Morty’s origins for characters that he helped bring to life in the first place. But such as it goes with animated series whose creators have tons of other projects happening simultaneously. Plus, the Season 6 premiere was probably written 2+ years ago, so I’m sure there have been lots of other twists and turns that have come up in the meantime that Harmon obviously can’t speak to just yet.

(Image credit: Adult Swim)

Speaking of things that can’t be spoken about in super-specific detail, but can be addressed in more of a general sense, Dan Harmon did answer one of the biggest questions that fans had following Season 5’s conclusion. He confirmed that Evil Morty will be back on our screens at some point in Rick and Morty’s future, though it may be a while before it happens. Here’s how he put it:

You will definitely be seeing him again. I caution that we may not be seeing him soon. He’s an easy guy to forget about because he kind of took care of himself. He just wanted to get beyond the Central Finite Curve. (Laughs.) But we’ve written Season 7 and we’re working on Season 8 right now — that’s the only way for us to be able to stay on schedule — so I can say with 100% certainty that Evil Morty is coming back, but I can’t give a schedule on that.

It’s just like an Evil Morty to show up when others least expect it, as opposed to the other way around. He’s like the Spanish Inquisition in that way. [Waits for the Spanish Inquisition to burst through the door, which never happens.] Of course, now we can start theorizing that Murderer Rick is actually Evil Morty in disguise, and that Morty is 100% his own grandfather. That’s the only way this show ends.

With the A+ nemesis Mr. Nimbus and other fan-favorite characters set to return, Rick and Morty’s dimension-hopping Season 6 mayhem continues every Sunday night on Adult Swim at 11:30 p.m. ET. While waiting for new episodes, head to our 2022 TV premiere schedule to see what new and returning shows are on the way soon.

Krapopolis: Premiere Date, Cast, And Other Things We Know About Dan Harmon's New Show

Will Ashton — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 20:04:00 +0000

Any family is going to bring its fair share of drama. But if you add, say, gods, monsters, and a mortal or two into the mix, you have the recipe for a far-out farce. That's hopefully set to be the case with Fox's Krapopolis, the latest animated show from Dan Harmon.

Understandably expected to be a major series for the broadcast network, the upcoming 2023 TV show is still a little while away, but we're learning some fun details about the mythical sitcom, which we'll share with you now. Here's what we know about this new series.

What Is The Krapopolis Premiere Date?

(Image credit: Fox)

After experiencing a long delay and some behind-the-scenes shake-ups (which we will get to later), we can confirm that Krapopolis is officially slated to premiere on September 24, 2023, as part of Fox’s Animation Domination block. According to Deadline, the series was at one point set to come out in November 2022 until it faced a delay when Welcome to Flatch took its spot and then, after a May 2023 release was confirmed, was delayed again.

Over the past few years, Fox has had a hit-and-miss track record with their Animation Domination round-up — with more misses than hits, unfortunately. Indeed, for every Simpsons, Family Guy, King of the Hill, or Bob's Burgers, there are at least as many shows like Sit Down, Shut Up!, The Cleveland Show, Allen Gregory, and Bless the Harts. Whether or not Krapopolis ends up closer to the former or the latter crop remains to be seen, but Fox has high hopes, and it's easy to see why. It's got a big-name producer, a high-profile cast, a delirious high concept, and a potential foothold on the future of how entertainment will eventually be watched, made, and consumed. But we'll get to all that.

A Teaser Clip Shows A Glimpse At Life In The Titular, Mythical Community

(Image credit: Fox)

The closest we have gotten to a sneak peek at what to expect from Krapopolis is a special clip that was initially shown exclusively at Comic Con 2022. Take a look what fantastic hijinks the characters are prone to in the video below:

Featuring opening narration by the unmistakable voice of Community and Rick and Morty veteran Keith David, the clip evolves from a modern-ish town hall meeting into a disaster of surreal proportions. Watching a 36-year-old peasant test a helmet intended to help defeat a Medusa by blinding the user is just dark, but watching said Medusa’s severed head roll through the crowd and turn every last one of them into stone is uproarious. What makes the clip especially exciting is hearing the first taste of the talented voice cast’s portrayals.

Krapopolis’ Voice Cast Includes Hannah Waddingham, Richard Ayoade, Matt Berry, Pam Murphy, And Duncan Trussell

(Image credit: Fox)

Joining the cast of Krapopolis is a variety of familiar faces — or, more importantly, familiar voices. The ensemble includes Ted Lasso cast member Hannah Waddingham, Richard Ayoade of the The IT Crowd fame, and his co-star from the cult favorite sitcom, Matt Berry, whom more American audiences will likely recognize from one of the best horror TV shows on Hulu, FX's What We Do In the Shadows). Pam Murphy from Mapleworth Murders and Duncan Trussell – the creator of Netflix’s The Midnight Gospel – are all signed on to lend their talents to this upcoming animated series.

More specifically, Ayoade will voice Tyrannis – the mortal son of Waddingham’s character, Deliria, who is the goddess of self-destruction, and Berry’s oversexed, unemployed minotar named Shlub. Additionally, Murphy will voice Stupendous – Tyrannis' cyclops half-sister – and Trussell will be heard as Hippocampus, who is Shlub's regrettable offspring from a previous affair with a mermaid.

The Animated Sitcom Centers Around A Flawed Family Of Humans, Gods, And Monsters

(Image credit: Fox)

Set in mythical Ancient Greece, Krapopolis centers around a flawed family of humans, gods, and monsters (both inside and out) as they haphazardly run one of the world's first cities with minimal peril, as a press release details. Whether or not this oddball family can do it without killing each other will be determined during the program's run.

Mainly centered around Tyrannis – a mortal among gods/demigods trying his damndest to be a benevolent ruler, even in a land that lives up to its name – Krapopolis will allow audiences to interact with self-destructive gods, mismatched personalities, and diluted dullards. Whether the city still stands as these overpowered titans gnaw at each other's throats will result in the upcoming show's wild, wacky heart.

It’s The Newest Animated Series Created By Dan Harmon

(Image credit: Adult Swim)

Krapopolis will likely benefit from more than just having star power in the recording booth. It also has star power from the creative side of things, being the brain-child of Dan Harmon.

Following the success of the aforementioned Community – which is finally getting that long-awaited movie – and Rick & Morty – which is going on without its recently fired co-creator and star, Justin Roiland – Harmon is a proven name. In fact, he is a name in a way that most comedy writers aren't, and he has demonstrated his wit many, many times over. Hopefully, that's also the case with Fox's Krapopolis, the newest animated series from the celebrated scribe.

Krapopolis Is Considered The First-Ever Animated Series Created Entirely On The Blockchain

(Image credit: Fox)

As a press release proudly notes, Fox's Krapopolis is the first animated series created entirely on the blockchain. It will allow the show's eventual superfans to have premier access and ownership of the series. This means it will be a watershed moment for NFTs should it really prove to be A) a successful series and B) the future of entertainment as we know it.

Frankly, I'm still in the dark when it comes to NFTs. I've heard a few explanations, read a few descriptors, and parsed through some online chatter, but that’s about it. We'll just have to see how this unique method of entertainment consumption impacts the series and, perhaps, the future of pop culture as we know it.

(Image credit: Netflix)

Krapopolis Season 1 Will Be Showrun By BoJack Horseman’s Jordan Young

Running the show for Krapopolis Season 1 is Jordan Young, who has kept an active television career after getting his start as a character layout artist for Fox's The Simpsons. Later, Young would write for Raising Hope, Drawn Together, Better Off Ted, and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia before continuing that position, in addition to co-producing shows like BoJack Horseman, Life in Pieces, and Close Enough.

However, when Krapopolis returns for its second and third seasons – which were confirmed in March 2023, as reported by Deadline – Alex Rubens will assume the position of showrunner. A previous collaborator of Harmon’s on some of the best episodes of Community and Rick and Morty, Rubens also wrote for Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele’s sketch comedy series and co-wrote their 2016 movie, Keanu, with them as well.

It is always amusing when a comedy TV show attempts to fused modernized humor with historical (or mythical) settings. We shall see how Krapopolis measures up against other examples of the like when it premieres this fall!

Beyond Evil Morty, Rick And Morty's Dan Harmon Explains True Meaning Behind Season 5 Finale

Nick Venable — Wed, 08 Sep 2021 16:19:42 +0000

Spoilers below for the Season 5 finale of Rick and Morty, so be warned if you didn't watch!

After delivering a season that felt uneven to many fans, given how many episodes intentionally side-stepped the series' beloved and hyper-deep canonical history, Rick and Morty dropped a whopper of a conclusion on audiences with "Rickmurai Jack." Not only did the episode take multiple trips back into Rick's past to confirm certain details and theories, but it also finally gave fans the long-awaited return of Evil Morty, whose last-minute yellow-portal twist basically broke the show's plot wide open. As co-creator Dan Harmon notes, however, the two-part finale's main purpose wasn't just to deliver fan service.

In the final behind-the-scenes video for Season 5's "Inside the Episode" features, the Rick and Morty creative team talked about the intense and obsessive process that went into crafting Evil Morty's years-long scheme, and the story behind the Citadel's formation. And while all of that was definitely interesting and hilariously disturbing in equal doses, Dan Harmon popped up in the end to provide some over-arching wisdom pertaining to the true purpose behind "Rickmurai Jack." And yes, it's all about the titular pair. In Harmon's words:

The finale of Season 5 is a story about advancing the relationship behind Rick and Morty to be one that involves a little more trust. What challenges can we throw at two people willing to commit to working together?

Obviously there's slightly more to the Season 5 capper than just that, considering fans learned that the murderous Rick has used the Citadel as a Morty manufacturing plant to provide all the other Smartest Ricks with naive, sycophant sidekicks. But really, that detail and all the other fucked up Rick reveals are just window-dressing ways to say "Rick and Morty sure do have a complicated relationship, y'all."

While other TV show creative teams might decide to take a step back and slow things down with a super-focused and conversation-heavy episode in order to explore a project's main characters, Rick and Morty has made an art out of building up endlessly superfluous plot mechanics and sci-fi stereotypes to parcel out clues and details behind the grandfather and grandson's twisted relationship. Indeed, part of the fun of the show's self-aware info-dumps is wondering which parts are truly authentic and which bits will be explained away as non-canonical, only to return three seasons later with a confirmation. But the point behind it all is far more human in nature.

So while many fans will choose to spend time endlessly sifting through plot points to try and make sense of the multiverse storytelling, it all comes down to Rick and Morty's trust-lacking relationship. Season 5's final two episodes were a hilariously surreal and crow-filled exercise in giving Rick the mega-epiphany that he is guilty of forever fueling a highly toxic relationship with his (not exactly biological) grandson, arguably the only person in existence that actually chooses to hang out with Rick despite all of his red-flagged awfulness. The final episode was about bringing the characters' relationship to the limit — going so far as to explain Rick's bullshit is what inspired the "evil" in Evil Morty's nature — and about showcasing Morty's depthless well of empathy...and perhaps neediness, but also ample empathy.

Obviously, I'm as excited as anyone about seeing if and how Season 6 will pay off Evil Morty's yellow portals and the destruction of the Finite Curve Barrier, and what other multiverses' sperm monsters look like. But now that Season 5's conclusion has provided some much-needed context behind a lot of the episodes' "Rick OR Morty" nature, I'm now equally interested to see how the writers will approach the two characters' relationship in post-toxic ways. Assuming the opening title sequence doesn't just retcon everything that happened this season and revert to live-action with Christopher Lloyd. Which doesn't sound all that bad, really.

Rick And Morty's Dan Harmon Shares Hilarious Stamp Of Approval For Complex AF Decoy Episode

mick.joest@CinemaBlend.com (Mick Joest) — Fri, 02 Jul 2021 00:23:18 +0000

Rick and Morty has gifted fans some wild AF episodes in its run so far, but what the hilariously deadly Season 5 episode "Mortiplicity" did was quite special indeed. Viewers went on a twist-filled ride as Rick revealed to the rest of the family that he'd created "decoys" of them in the case that any threats ever tried to target them, which was absolutely worth all the worry. The episode then jumped from decoy family to decoy family while keeping the audience guessing whether they were watching the real characters or not.

If the episode felt confusing to watch, one can only imagine how difficult it must have been to write, and writer Albro Lundy confirmed that was precisely the case. Lundy walked fans through his thought process for the episode in a behind-the-scenes video, and revealed he filled a whiteboard in walking through the episode's nut-shelled problems and scenarios. Lundy's pitch for the episode was complex, but co-creator Dan Harmon was all-in on the premise, presumably in large part because he wasn't responsible for making it all make sense. Check out the hilarious stamp of approval Harmon deadpanned during the video, which further proves he's one of the best comedy guys in the business.

If a guy like [writer Albro Lundy] wants to dig his teeth into something that exhausting, I let them do it. Yes, pour your young blood into the soil around my mansion. Help my flowers bloom.

Dan Harmon was happy to let Albro Lundy run with the idea, and perhaps more importantly, he had faith that the Rick and Morty writer would pull off the Nolan-esque plotting with aplomb. The result was one of the Adult Swim series' most entertaining episodes yet, as it also contained many references and teases to continuity that audiences want so desperately. All things considered, it's essentially still just a one-off standalone episode, though its madcap nature will likely keep it in classic-episode consideration all the same.

Of course, Rick and Morty fans could also take Dan Harmon's bemused willingness to green-light this idea as another clear sign that there are no concrete plans for the Adult Swim show to go full-hog on extended serialized arcs and continuity. After all, it seems entirely possible that by the end of "Mortiplicity" that the real Smith family died somewhere in all the chaos, as it was heavily established that the decoys are unaware that they're decoys. But if every copy retained all the memories of the "original" family, comprised of another dimension's Rick and Morty living amongst the Smith family of another Earth, would it really make a difference if they were organic humans or not? If it were the real world, probably, but not so much here.

As I alluded to earlier, the implications of the episode made my brain hurt...at least I think it's my brain that's hurting. That's totally okay though, because Rick and Morty is all about providing entertainment first and foremost, and it certainly succeeded on that front with flying colors. Here's hoping Season 5 can maintain this meticulously frantic pace, because "Mortiplicity" will be a hard one to top.

Up next: 2021 Summer TV Premiere Schedule: List Of New And Returning Shows

With one of television's best characters among its ranks, Rick and Morty airs on Adult Swim on Sundays at 11:00 p.m. ET.

4 Key Takeaways From Rick And Morty's Season 5 Premiere

mick.joest@CinemaBlend.com (Mick Joest) — Mon, 21 Jun 2021 21:28:09 +0000

Warning! The following contains spoilers for the Rick and Morty Season 5 premiere "Mort Dinner Rick Andre." Read at your own risk!

Rick and Morty returned to Adult Swim for Season 5, and once again, viewers were sucked into the insanity that is the Sanchez/Smith family dynamic. In many ways, the premiere was the standard one-off affair, with plenty of moments that will likely never be addressed again in the series, though Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland's creative team also introduced several seemingly important moments that fans should commit to memory as the season goes on.

Despite co-creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland previously saying that Rick and Morty would be less serialized going forward, the Season 5 premiere laid some potential groundwork for plots and character beats that could mean big things down the road. Here's what we picked up on, and yes, Mr. Nimbus does get a mention or two, sans the dancing.

Beth And Jerry Are Actually Getting Along

Perhaps the biggest surprise of Rick and Morty Season 5's opening episode was that Beth and Jerry got along the better than we've seen at any point since the start of the series. The episode revealed that they're in couples' therapy..,and are also now a sex-positive married couple now...I guess? The pair actually got excited (to the point of desperation) by Mr. Nimbus' threesome proposal, and they effectively disgusted the rest of the family by the proclamation that they watch porn together. It's good to see their marriage is doing well now, even if the trade-off is more haunting moments with other family members.

Jessica Is A "Time God" Now

Morty's longtime crush Jessica had a movie night at his house, though it didn't at all turn out the way either of them wanted. Jessica was abducted by the anthropomorphic dogs that Morty scorned and traumatized in his efforts to retrieve wine from their dimension, and she was ultimately held in stasis within a crystal. Morty rescued her, but learned that Jessica's consciousness had survived for centuries off-world, developing a level of thinking and that put her on completely different intellectual plane. She ultimately decided she and Morty should be friends and shouted she was a "time god" as she vacated the premises. Rick and Morty didn't really show whether or not she received any time-god-ish powers from that experience, but I'm sure we'll see Jessica again in time...god.

Mr. Nimbus Controls The Police

Voiced by Dan Harmon, Mr. Nimbus is a being of unexplainable powers, to the point it is not entirely clear exactly what all he's capable of. He seems to have some command of the ocean, as well as some sick dance moves, but the main power we saw in Rick and Morty's Season 5 premiere is his hold over cops' behavior. Mr. Nimbus can do literally anything he wants with the local PD, and presumably others, which is a pretty awesome power to have for a villain. It's also guaranteed I'll be thinking of him any time a cop appears in Rick and Morty going forward, and I hope this isn't the last we've seen of him.

Nimbus Knew Rick's Wife Diane

One of the biggest reveals of the episode is that Rick Sanchez's wife Diane is apparently completely real, as seemingly proven by Nimbus' reference. There was some doubt from Rick and Morty fans about that after Rick declared a previous scene that included her was "completely fabricated." After she was name-checked in the Season 5 premiere, Rick quickly chastised Nimbus for attempting to create a "canonical backstory' of his life. But if Nimbus knew she was a real person, then it would appear that Beth's mother actually was Diane Sanchez. Unless it wasn't.

Up next: 2021 Summer TV Premiere Schedule: List Of New And Returning Shows

Rick and Morty Season 5 likely has many more surprises on the way, so fans should tune in to watch Sunday nights on Adult Swim at 11:00 p.m. ET. If the trailers are any indication of what to expect, there should be a lot more hilarious but potentially important moments on the way!

Rick And Morty Confirms Key Character Returning To Season 5 To Spark More Fan Debates

mick.joest@CinemaBlend.com (Mick Joest) — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 01:28:09 +0000

The Rick And Morty team has been non-committal in confirming whether or not the show will continue to touch on previously serialized storylines following its massive renewal by Adult Swim and, on top of that, it's sending mixed signals that keep fans guessing. After an episode in Season 4 had Rick and Morty openly discuss their desire and plan for more episodic adventures, Dan Harmon confirmed at a recent panel for the show that a key Season 4 character will be returning in Season 5.

Dan Harmon and others spoke to fans during the online Rick and Morty panel at Adult Swim Festival 2020 and made the announcement that a new character in Season 4 would return for Season 5. Read on for Harmon's reveal on the character and what it means for one of the show's central characters:

There’s pretty groovy things coming regarding Beth… Space Beth was not a one-off character. That’s a thing that could have been the case.

For those who may not remember, Space Beth was introduced in the Season 4 episode "Star Mort Rickturn Of The Jerri." Her existence is the result of Beth wanting a life with more fulfillment but not necessarily wanting to abandon her family in the process. Rick created a clone with the same memories for Beth to fulfill her dream but also realized he wasn't comfortable with losing his daughter and having a clone in her place. He deliberately shuffled the bodies and then wiped his own memory to not know which version of Beth is the original one.

As of now, it's still unclear which Beth is the original one. Ironically, Rick and Morty fans will remember that neither Beth is technically Rick's original Beth, as he and Morty joined this universe after ruining their own a couple of seasons before that. Perhaps Space Beth's return will be to address something related to that, or it could just be an adventure that requires her to team up with her other half.

One never can be sure with Rick and Morty, which introduces a lot of new characters who may or may not continue to be a part of the story. Characters like Krombopulos Michael seemed like they would be a heavy part of the story given fan acclaim, and who would've guessed a character named Mr. Poopybutthole would have the run he's had on the show? It's never obvious which secondary characters will be relevant in the Adult Swim series, which may be a key as to what makes the series so enjoyable.

Up next: 2021 Winter And Spring TV Premiere Schedule: List Of New And Returning Shows

Rick and Morty Season 5 is currently in development to air on Adult Swim, while past seasons can be streamed right now on HBO Max. Continue to stick with CinemaBlend for all the latest happening in the franchise, and for more news happening in television and movies.

Community Ending Explained: What Happened, And How A Movie Could Wrap It Up

Eric Eisenberg — Thu, 12 Nov 2020 22:00:00 +0000

It’s now been more than five years since Season 6 of Community came to an end, but it most definitely has not faded from fans’ thoughts. Not only have audiences continued to express love for the show, but its existence on various streaming services have allowed it to be discovered by people who never watched a single episode when it was on the air. The desire to see the “Movie” part of #SixSeasonsAndAMovie is still very real, and based on information that has come out of various interviews, the possibility of seeing it happen is also very real.

With that in mind we have put together this feature, with the intention being to both look back at how Community ended, and what could happen in the near future. There’s a lot of potential, excitement, and material to reflect on, so let’s dive in!

What Happens In The Last Episode Of Community

After years and years of living on the proverbial bubble, Community got the opportunity to go out its own way with the thirteenth episode of its sixth season, titled “Emotional Consequences Of Broadcast Television.” The school year ends and the Save Greendale Committee is once again disbanded for the summer, leaving its members to head to a local bar to celebrate.

Influenced by Abed, they begin to look ahead and speculate what a “Season 7” would be, and each take turns pitching their ideas for what their futures could look like. The concepts get a bit outlandish (with approaches like Greendale becoming its own country, and the group adding an animated character), but the undercurrent realization – mostly emanating from Jeff – is that their respective plans don’t keep them together as a group. After years of being dependent on one another, they are ready to move on and begin their lives, and this is particularly driven home with the announcements that both Annie and Abed are leaving Colorado for job offers.

Jeff is unable to take the emotional overload of the moment and returns to safe haven, a.k.a. the study room. Annie finds him first, and they have an honest conversation that leads to a kiss – and they are nearly discovered by the rest of the group, who all come in for a group hug. The episode concludes with a montage of the characters saying their goodbyes as they start their lives apart.

It’s a sweet, wonderful conclusion to an extraordinary show, and it services both the characters and all of the various themes. But is there room for the story to continue? The answer is a definite “yes.”

Where The Community Finale Leaves Its Main Characters

While there is hope for the future of Community (more on that in a minute), the finale does provide a wonderful dose of closure for all of the characters who fans loved watching over the course of six seasons.

Jeff Winger

By the end of Community’s series finale, Jeff is forced to confront his worst fear – seeing those that he loves move on without him – but he does so with maturity and grace (well, mostly… it depends on how you feel about his relationship with Annie and the final kiss they share). He seems relatively happy as a Greendale professor, but a return to practicing law doesn’t seem like it’s totally off the table.

Britta Perry

Britta is perpetually her own worst enemy, and by the end of Season 6 she definitely shows some growth, but also still has a lot of work to do. The finale doesn’t give her a specific journey like it does for some of the other characters who will be discussed, but maybe one day she’ll actually manage to become a real therapist and legitimately help people (after doing some serious work to help herself, of course).

Abed Nadir

While Greendale Community College clearly doesn’t have a good track record when it comes to graduate success stories, Abed at the very least does pursue a career in his field of study. One of the big shocks of the series finale is the revelation that he is moving to Los Angeles to take a job as a production assistant on a new Fox series. Could it actually lead to a serious career in the film business?

Annie Edison

Annie spent her first few years at Greendale studying hospital administration, but after Season 4 she pivoted to forensic criminology, and at the end of the finale she is all set to fly to Washington DC for a summer internship program with the FBI. It’s easy to imagine her being successful, as she is one of television history’s most driven characters, but how things really turn out is unknown.

Shirley Bennett

Of all the post-Greendale stories, Shirley’s is by far the strangest. Due to her father falling ill, she makes the decision to move to Atlanta, and while there she takes a job as a personal chef for a disabled private investigator. Obviously it’s designed as a joke about network spin-offs, but it’s definitely canon, and that just makes us wonder about all of the crazy adventures that she has quietly been up to in the years since we last saw her.

Troy Barnes

We sadly didn’t see the return of Troy in the Community finale, but it’s probably for the best when you consider the sendoff that the show gave him in Season 5. Having him set sail with LeVar Burton aboard the Childish Tycoon made for a sweet goodbye, and there is even a nice mystery left hanging thanks to a television chyron in "Analysis of Cork-Based Networking" revealing that his boat was captured by pirates in the Gulf of Mexico.

Ben Chang

Being a ridiculously chaotic individual, Ben Chang is a character about whom we have many, many questions… but we’ll just stick with his strange final moment in the series finale in which he confesses while crying that he is gay. Could this bit of self-actualization perhaps be the key that puts him on a real path towards sanity? We wouldn’t exactly bet on it, but it’s something to consider.

Craig Pelton

Is Craig Pelton a good dean? Most definitely not. But he does manage to keep Greendale Community College functioning and standing, and it’s the job he’ll probably do until the day he dies (which may or may not be the day that the college stops functioning and collapses on him while he’s inside). Maybe he’ll someday be able to turn the place around and establish it as a respected school, but, again, we wouldn’t bet on it.

Could We See A Community Movie?

Possibly with the understanding that a Community movie would need a bit of distance from the show in order to be really successful, chatter about the potential project died down a bit in the years immediately following the sixth season – but things have most definitely started heating up in the last year and a half.

In June 2019, Alison Brie went on the record saying that she would love to see a Community movie happen at Netflix, and while that initially seemed to just be an extension of her long-standing relationship with the streaming service, the idea gained a lot more weight in the first half of 2020. After a considerable amount of time as a Hulu exclusive, Netflix started hosting the show in April, and it exposed its awesomeness to a whole new audience. This increased interest caught the attention of Joel McHale, who acknowledged publically that the attention could increase the chances of us seeing a feature, and creator Dan Harmon has acknowledged that the behind-the-scenes conversation isn’t just a fantasy.

Harmon, who has seen his popularity skyrocket in the post-Community years thanks to having co-created Rick & Morty, was asked about the potential for a movie in May 2020, and he explained,

When the marketplace gets affected, conversations happen. And when conversations happen, things happen. I mean, when you’re part of the Community family, you learn never to raise expectations, keep ‘em nice and low and then be pleasantly surprised. So I can say that there are conversations happening that people would want to be happening and that I’m very, very excited about the coming months.

So for now we continue to play the waiting game, but there is definitely a reason for Community fans to be at least somewhat optimistic.

Up next: 5 Things We Need To See In A Community Spin-Off Movie

7 Cool Things We Learned From The Rick And Morty Adult Swim Con Panel

Eric Eisenberg — Thu, 30 Jul 2020 23:00:00 +0000

Thanks to the simultaneously run Comic-Con @ Home and Adult Swim Con this past weekend, fans had the chance to watch a number of really exciting and fun online events, and some of the best material of the stretch came out of the panel for Rick and Morty. Featuring co-creator Dan Harmon and voice actors Sarah Chalke, Chris Parnell and Spencer Grammer, audiences had the chance to learn all kinds of fun things about the making of the show and its future.

We already brought you the first look at Rick and Morty Season 5 on Friday, but that was just one part of all the awesomeness, so we created this feature to bring all of it into one place. There were a lot of great things we learned from the panel on Twitch, and these are our seven favorites.

No, Even The Writers Don’t Know Which Beth Is The Clone

The finale of Rick and Morty Season 4 packed one hell of an emotional wallop, as it revealed not only that Rick went ahead with Beth’s proposed cloning plan, but that he purposefully made sure that he didn’t personally know which one was real and which was created in the lab. The events have created a lingering mystery that may someday be resolved in the show, but for now it’s a mystery that lacks a firm conclusion. Asked during event if at the very least the writers know which one is which, Dan Harmon said that there currently is no answer, and that,

When [Rick] found out he doesn't know, he said, ‘I'm a terrible father,’ which is a metaphor for us saying we're bad writers.

Spencer Grammer Wears Rick And Morty Gear Everywhere, But Nobody Recognizes Her

Spencer Grammer wore tremendously appropriate attire to the Rick and Morty video panel, rocking a top with little Pickle Ricks all over it, and apparently it’s far from the only piece of show themed clothing that she has in her wardrobe. It’s something that gets a lot of attention when she is in public, and people comment that they like her outfit… but the twist is that nobody actually recognizes her as the voice of Summer Smith (an experience not shared by co-stars Sarah Chalke and Chris Parnell, but that’s arguably because they are also well known for their live-action work). Said Grammer,

It literally just happened to me. I was like, 'I gotta run out to get something before we started this.' And they were like, 'Ah, Pickle Rick!' And I was like, 'Thank you!' But they had no idea.

Dan Harmon Feels Like Morty And Summer Probably Shouldn’t Be 100% Okay With Having Two Moms

Despite Rick’s terrible parenting, the Smith family finds a degree of harmony at the end of Season 4 with everybody but the god-like scientist accepting Space Beth as a new member of the family. Unfortunately, it’s a conclusion that doesn’t really sit well with the show’s co-creator, however. Dan Harmon admits during the panel that having Morty and Summer instantly adjust to having two moms isn’t something that truly gels with their characters. Being a development arriving at the end of the episode, however, Harmon said that they had to “pinch it off.”

There Is A Major Shift Happening Behind The Scenes As Writing Is Outpacing Animation

One of the not-so-fun things about being a Rick and Morty fan is that the wait for new episodes can be a bit painful. Removed from the old system that demanded shows produce fresh seasons annually, the series has been more apt to release new episodes every two years, and Season 4 was broadcast in two separate halves. This has largely happened because of the writer’s room taking a fair bit of time to develop scripts, but now the dynamic is changing behind the scenes.

As confirmed during the panel, rather than the animators being kept waiting for new material, Dan Harmon, Justin Roiland & Co. have already managed to put together all of Season 5, and have begun work on Season 6. Sadly what we don’t know is if this will raise the chances of seeing Rick and Morty return in 2021, but it’s still interesting that the scribes have found their groove.

The Talking Cat Could Have Been In Season 5… Had Dan Harmon Remembered He Existed

Matthew Broderick makes one of the most wonderful guest appearances on the show thus far in Season 4, voicing a mysterious talking cat who has a strange obsession with Florida and a horrific, nightmarish past. Most fans would probably call him “memorable,” but evidently that doesn’t include Dan Harmon. The Rick and Morty co-creator was asked about the cat during the panel, and while he confirmed that any character that doesn’t meet some kind of terrible, violent end is kept in play for future use, he also admitted that the verbose feline won’t show up in Season 5 because Harmon forgot he existed. Now that he’s been reminded hopefully we will get to see the mysterious pet back in Season 6.

Dan Harmon Would Enjoy Doing A Bojack Horseman Crossover

Rick and Morty has thrown in Easter eggs connected to Breaking Bad, Gravity Falls, and South Park, and the titular characters have even literally crashed a Simpsons couch gag, but one thing we have not yet seen the show do in an episode is travel across the multiverse to create a legitimate crossover. As of right now it seems that there are no concrete plans to pull off such a move, but if they were to try Dan Harmon knows which world he’d like to play in: Bojack Horseman.

In addition to the shows having a shared audience, with many fans of one enjoying the other, the Netflix series also starred a veteran of Dan Harmon’s Community, with Alison Brie voicing author Diane Nguyen. The slight hiccup with this plan is the fact that Bojack Horseman came to an end earlier this year with the arrival of the second half of its final season. That being said, if any show presently has the power to resurrect it, it’s Rick and Morty.

While There Are Jump The Shark Fears, Dan Harmon Sees A Friendship Growing Between Rick And Jerry

Some of the funniest moments in Rick and Morty come when Rick is on the offensive against Jerry and insulting his entire existence (Dan Harmon highlighted “you injected 20 cc of liquid dream killer into my daughter” during the panel), but fans might be either fascinated and horrified to learn that the co-creator of the series sees them on a path to becoming friends. Talking about viewing things in the macro, Harmon said,

There's [an arc] evolving with Jerry that we talk about all the time, which is sort of like Jerry and Rick becoming... I hope this is doesn't jump the shark to talk like this, but Jerry and Rick becoming friends. That sounds like it would destroy the show, but we all have a lot of friends that were like incredibly disrespectful to abusive to.

At present we don’t know when we will be getting new Rick and Morty, but for now you can always rewatch all of the previously-aired episodes (as well as a number of other great shows with similar vibes). The Adult Swim show’s first three seasons are available on both Hulu and HBO Max, and cable subscribers can watch Season 4 on AdultSwim.com.

Rick And Morty Is Giving Rick A Nemesis In Season 5, Check Out The First Look

Eric Eisenberg — Sat, 25 Jul 2020 01:21:54 +0000

It was relatively only recently that Rick And Morty completed its fourth season, airing the last half of the run in the first half of this year, but already we are insatiably hungry for more. Sadly, it's probably going to be a while before we actually get to see Season 5 in its complete form – but the good news is that we already have a sneak peek at one of the episodes, and it reveals that Rick has had an ocean based nemesis named Mister Nimbus that he's apparently never talked about before.

The unfinished clip from Rick and Morty Season 5 debuted this evening during the show's Comic-Con @ Home Panel, with Dan Harmon teasing that the footage comes from the opening of one of the episodes on the upcoming slate. Check it out by clicking play on the video below!

For what is supposed to be just the opening of an episode, there is a hell of a lot to unpack here. While it's not uncommon for Rick and Morty to drop audiences into action that is already in progress, this is arguably the first time where it really looks like it might be the end for the titular duo. With Rick bleeding out from some kind of chest wound, Morty has to pull him over to their spaceship, and together they barely escape from what appears to be flying sentient rocks by escaping through a wormhole to Earth. Their arrival through the atmosphere unfortunately sees them in really awful condition, and as he is ready to die the ever-nervous teenager decides to use what he believes are his final moments to tell his forever crush, Jessica, the way he really feels.

What Morty doesn't expect in the slightest is that Jessica doesn't totally rebuff his admission, instead noting that his nervousness is a kind of selfishness, and she agrees to go on a date with him. This apparently is alone enough to give the kid the motivation to survive, and he is thankfully able to steer the ship into a bouncy tree that prevents a straight collision with the planet. The bad news is that it lands them in the ocean, and evidently that's a place that Rick is never supposed to go.

This is an excellent and totally unexpected set-up – though there is an interesting potential plot hole that Rick And Morty fans may notice. Specifically, this isn't the first time in the span of the series that we have seen the god-like scientist make a trip underwater, as the third season episode "The Ricklantis Mixup" features our two titular protagonists going to and from an adventure in Atlantis (even though most of the episode is dedicated to various stories going on at the Citadel of Ricks). It seems fair to assume that Mister Nimbus isn't a character who only became a nemesis for Rick off-screen within the last season, and the duo clearly didn't run into him previously given Morty's puzzlement.

Possibly explanations for this plot hole could be that Atlantis is outside of Mister Nimbus' "jurisdiction," giving Rick freedom to travel there, or it could just be that Rick using portal technology is a kind of loophole. We'll just have to wait to watch the episode and see if it's something that is addressed or ignored (given the intelligence demonstrated by Rick and Morty on a regular basis, the safe money is probably on the former).

As for the question of when we will get to see said full episode, the answer is that we have no idea. During the Comic-Con live-stream, show co-creator Dan Harmon confirmed that Season 5 has entirely been written, and that the staff is now working on Season 6, but as you can tell from the clip above, there is still a ton of work that needs to be completed on the animation side of things. We can certainly hope that we'll get to see the next 10 Rick and Morty adventures sometime in 2021, but nothing has been confirmed to this point.

This clip is only one of many great things that came out of the Rick and Morty Comic-Con At Home panel, so stay tuned for more of our coverage, as well as more of our coverage of the show in general, here on CinemaBlend!

Up next: 7 Rick And Morty Inside Jokes That Are Completely Brilliant

Rick And Morty's Season Finale Included A Very Sweet Easter Egg

mick.joest@CinemaBlend.com (Mick Joest) — Sun, 07 Jun 2020 20:30:30 +0000

Warning! The following contains spoilers for the Season 4 finale of Rick and Morty. Read at your own risk!

Rick and Morty Season 4 is at an end and, while audiences didn't get the Evil Morty follow-up they wanted, they did get a lot of other surprising and memorable moments. For all the scenes with "Phoenix Person" and Tammy, however, there was another cool easter egg fans may not have noticed unless they were paying close attention.

The easter egg was an animated cameo of deceased Rick and Morty producer J. Michael "Mike" Mendel. Mendel and his dog, which can be seen in the background during the final minutes of Season 4, in which Jerry is driving the invisible garbage truck. Take a look:

The easter egg (via Men's Health) was the second time Rick and Morty had made reference to Mike Mendel in the season. Fans may remember seeing the same character in the Season 4 premiere along with text that read "In loving memory of Mike Mendel." Mendel died in late September of 2019 two days before his 55th birthday of natural causes.

The easter egg dedicated to Mike Mendel shows how much the line producer, who worked on Rick and Morty and formerly The Simpsons, meant to the industry. At the time of his death, co-creator Justin Roiland took to social media to share the news and to express just how much Mendel meant to him:

Mendel won an Emmy for working on a Rick and Morty episode fans may remember quite well -- "Pickle Rick." Prior to that, he had won 3 Emmys for his work on The Simpsons, which was from his tenure with the show from 1995-1998. The Simpsons paid tribute to Mike Mendel in a similar manner at the time of his passing, with an animated version and note honoring his legacy.

Mendel has been described as one of the producers who has shaped adult animation throughout the past couple decades, so it should come as no surprise he's worked on two of the best. Obviously, as Justin Roiland's words in 2019 conveyed, he's going to be missed, which is likely why the show felt it important to immortalize him in Season 4. It may even be something that happens again in the future, so if fans see his character lurking in the background of future episodes, they now know why he's hanging around!

Up next: Why Rick And Morty's Plumbus Looks So Gross

Rick and Morty is done for Season 4 but, unlike past seasons, it doesn't have to worry about its future for a while. Adult Swim has already given the green light for Season 5 and beyond, so all fans have to do is kick back, relax, and hope this show continues to be one of the best animated programs on television. Be sure to stick with CinemaBlend for more on the development of Season 5, and for the latest news happening in the world of television and movies.

Why Dan Harmon And Justin Roiland Choose To Keep Away From Rick And Morty Fan Theories

Eric Eisenberg — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 08:52:25 +0000

While there are plenty of television shows out there that struggle to find an audience, Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland’s Rick And Morty operates with one of the most engaged fanbases around. Not only do people clearly love the show (and showcase that love online frequently), but they also dig deep into it and formulate all kinds of strange theories about both past episodes and where things are going in the future. It’s a fun group to be a part of if you really love the Adult Swim series – but if you’re hoping that the show’s creators are constantly digging through the material and reading fan pieces, we have some disappointing news: they’re not. On the plus side, however, they have some very good reasons.

With Rick and Morty Season 4 having just ended, I recently thought to look back at a two-on-one interview I did with Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland prior to the main run of Season 3 episodes, and one of the interesting subjects covered in conversation was about their relationship with fans and their engagement with fan engagement. I asked the duo about their awareness of chatter and audience theorizing, and they explained why it is that they’ve learned to keep away. Said Roiland,

We don't read that stuff now. It's fun to talk about all these different possibilities, but there's only a few things, a very, very small number of things that we would be interested in canonizing from this realm of fan theory stuff. I think it's more fun for us to just keep charging ahead. And then only when we hit a wall where we're like, 'Shit, okay, we have to make a decision about this in order to tell this type of story or this specific story,' do we go back and start looking through all of the evidence. But we definitely stay away.

Continuing, and being as respectful to the Rick and Morty fans as possible, Justin Roiland explained that part of the detachment from fan theories and chatter comes simply from his closeness to the material. In the same way that a farmer may not want to peruse a bunch of corn recipes after spending an entire day harvesting, the show co-creator doesn’t ever find himself feeling super excited to read message boards and social media after having spent his days burning out his brain coming up with material in the writer’s room and recording booth. He explained,

For me it's more just like I don't want it in my head, you know? And also, maybe this is horrible to admit, but I think it's also when you're working on the show and you're in the writer's room for X amount of hours a day and your brain is melting from all the potential permutations of all these stories we're trying to break, the last thing you want to do is go home and lay in bed and then read more things that you've been thinking about from other people outside of the room.

For Dan Harmon, the case of Rick and Morty is an interesting one, as he has a bit of experience when it comes to actively discussing his work with a show’s fanbase. When his first network series, Community, was airing on NBC, Harmon was regularly interacting with audiences and even incorporated certain encounters into various episodes (a prime example being Chevy Chase's Pierce’s use of the fake expression “Streets ahead” in Season 1, which originated from a fan mocking Harmon online using the non-existent phrase).

As Harmon explained, part of the reason he felt compelled to be a part of that conversation was because he felt that being a part of it helped him psychologically deal with the fact that it existed and wasn’t something within his control:

What I found on Community, it's unavoidable that when people are handling the thing that you work on and care about, they're going to use language that might affect you emotionally. And it's a mistake to chime into that conversation. And I think it's also a mistake to even be reading it because chiming in is a way of coping with it.That's what I would do with Community, and be like, 'What are the fans saying? Oh, that fan is saying something that makes me sad. So instead of walking around sad, I'm going to finish being sad by logging into Reddit and saying, 'Hi, Dan Harmon here. This makes me sad,' And then I'll be done with it.' Well, yes, you'll also be in TMZ. I don't want to walk around with the sadness.

To further express his view on the subject, Dan Harmon used what is a frequent metaphor among Hollywood writers by comparing his work to a flesh-and-blood baby that a parent raises and puts out into the world. As a good parent, he wants to be sure that his child is being treated well and respectfully – but the nature of the world is that it’s never going to provide the exact treatment you expect, and it’s a hard thing to see something innocent exposed to cruel nature. Said Harmon,

It's an overused metaphor, but it's the one that works. It's like your baby. You make something and it's like a baby. And so going into a place like Reddit, it's like watching your baby just get thrown around by people love it. It's amazing. And then stopping to say like, 'Oh, I don't like these seams; there's gunk on it.' And then throwing it. And you're like, 'First of all, that was verbally hurtful. Second of all, you're throwing my baby,' and it's landing everywhere and it can't get hurt. That's where the metaphor breaks down. But it does affect you the same way.

It’s a reasonable perspective. No piece of art is ever going to be universally beloved, and while Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland have a great deal of pride in what they’ve created for Rick and Morty, there is a point where it stops belonging to them and starts belongs to the fans, and that’s not always an easy transition. They’ve learned that the smarter move is to simply step away.

What’s more, they’re not even entirely convinced that Rick and Morty fans actually want to know that they are checking in on fan theories and their analysis of the show. Harmon explained that he feels as though audiences should be able to express their thoughts about and appreciation for the show without the knowledge that the showrunners are looming and judging takes on their creation. Said Harmon

They don't want us there!... Why would you want to think when you were typing about your favorite show that you had to filter it through 'Maybe Vince Gilligan is gonna come in and read it.' You'd rather just talk about Breaking Bad.

As noted earlier, Rick and Morty recently completed its run of Season 4, and now the wait has begun for Season 5. Cable subscribers can watch the most recent episodes for a limited time on the Adult Swim website, or purchase them online and previous seasons are available digitally, on both Blu-ray and DVD, and on HBO Max and Hulu.

Up next: Rick And Morty's Best Side Characters, From Krombopulos Michael To Mr. Poopybutthole

Community: 10 Major Behind The Scenes Events That Have Happened

Eric Eisenberg — Mon, 25 May 2020 23:00:00 +0000

Between 2009 and 2015, there was arguably no show on the small screen funnier than Dan Harmon’s Community. There’s a reason why it landed in the Top 50 of CinemaBlend’s list of the 100 best sitcoms of all time. The series crafted a balance of dark, caustic wit with goofy, pop culture-obsessed sensibilities, and the series that came from that recipe is as smart as it is hilarious (and it has an impressive number of special inside jokes). With the ability to stream with a Peacock subscription and on Blu-ray, fans can reflect on multiple phenomenal seasons of television… but if you only simply watch/rewatch episodes, you may be ignorant to all of the conflict and drama that played out behind the scenes.

While its stars have gone on to do some excellent work, Community is very much alive in the hearts of fans, as we continue to patiently wait for fulfillment on the promise of “Six Seasons and a Movie.” But while we wait for the long-awaited feature to finally go into production, let’s take a look back at the show’s various casting change-ups, renewal issues, firings, hirings, and more during its network TV/streaming run.

(Image credit: Sony)

Dan Harmon And Chevy Chase Butt Heads

The first two seasons of Community aired without the show producing any scandalous headlines, but it was toward the end of production on Season 3 that things started to get a bit complicated behind the scenes – and the ground zero of conflict was the relationship between showrunner Dan Harmon and star Chevy Chase. On the final production, Chase reportedly stormed off set without filming one of his scenes, and Harmon ultimately didn’t come up with the best response to that action. During the show’s wrap party for the year, the writer delivered what ended up being called a “Fuck you, Chevy” speech (both Chase’s wife and daughter were attendees at the event and witnessed the slander).

That was bad, but things escalated. An irate Chevy Chase called Dan Harmon after the wrap party and left him a vitriolic voicemail… and Harmon made the unfortunate decision to play said voicemail while hosting his monthly podcast that was recorded with a live audience in Los Angeles.

(Image credit: Sony)

Dan Harmon Gets Fired From The Show After Season 3

Despite the fact that Chevy Chase has a nice long history of behind the scenes conflicts, there is no real way to defend the way that Dan Harmon responded to the actor’s behavior behind the scenes of Community – and that’s actually a sentiment that Harmon himself shared as the situation blew up. In April 2012, the showrunner took to his personal online blog and posted a message expressing great regret for his actions. In his piece, he not only apologized, but he assigned himself and both his speech and the podcast recording a litany of negative adjectives (not limited to "horrible," "childish," "self-obsessed," "unaware," "dumb," "unprofessional," "selfish baby" and "rude asshole.") It read as sincere, but it proved to not be enough to remedy the conflict. As a result of his treatment toward Chase, Harmon paid a significant price.

About a month-and-a-half after the feud went public, Community got a textbook case of good news/bad news. The former was that the show had been given the greenlight by NBC and was getting renewed for a fourth season. The latter was that Dan Harmon was not going to be involved, as his contract had been terminated as a result of his fight with Chevy Chase. Moses Port and David Guarascio, best known at the time for their work on the sitcom Just Shoot Me!, were hired by Sony to serve as the new showrunners on the series. The announcement of the news said that Harmon would be credited as a Consulting Producer for future episodes, but the series creator was quick to dissolve that sugar-coating. Posting a new blog post on Tumblr, the writer informed fans that he was not going to have any input into new episodes and was only receiving a credit because of his original contract.

(Image credit: Sony)

Chevy Chase Leaves The Show After Season 4

The incident with the wrap party and the voicemail was definitely the most public conflict involving Chevy Chase and Community, but it should be noted that the relationships between the actor and the other people involved with the show weren’t exactly sublime prior to all of that (for example, it was reported in October 2012 that he used a horrible racial epithet while on set). Watching the show with this in mind, it’s not hard to pick up on subtext in the storytelling. Pierce Hawthorne is represented as an aging dotard in Season 1, but it’s hard not to notice that he takes a serious antagonist turn in Season 2 and Season 3, and that was motivated by his deteriorating relationship with Dan Harmon and the show’s writers – specifically in that he showed them the kind of character he was best suited to play.

Chevy Chase arguably “won” when Dan Harmon got fired and Pierce Hawthorne lived on for another 11 episodes in Community Season 4. But the actor’s time with the show ended there. In November 2012 (which, mind you, was about four months before Season 4 started airing), it was officially announced that Chase was leaving the show. He didn’t exactly leave with grace, saying in an interview with The Huffington Post around the time that being a part of the sitcom was a “big mistake.” Conversely, the series showed some class. In addition to having Pierce Hawthorne graduate from Greendale Community College in the Season 4 finale “Advanced Introduction to Finality,” the actor also cameos as a hologram in the Season 5 premiere, “Repilot,” and had an entire episode dedicated to his character’s off-screen death (“Cooperative Polygraphy”).

(Image credit: Sony)

Dan Harmon Gets Rehired For Season 5

After yet another brush with cancellation, Community found itself still breathing in May 2013, NBC committing to another round of episodes from the sitcom, but that wasn’t the only amazing news that month brought for fans. A few weeks after the renewal announcement, buzz started to spread around Hollywood that Sony was considering bringing back Dan Harmon as showrunner – with the buzz seeming very plausible thanks to the fact that Chevy Chase wouldn’t be coming back as a series regular. It was only a few days after those rumor reports that Harmon personally confirmed that he was returning to his old job, and the network made it official a few weeks after that.

Neither NBC nor Sony ever issued any kind of explanatory official statement regarding why they rehired Dan Harmon following his termination, but fans at the time weren’t exactly begging for one; we were simply happy that Season 5 would see the original creator back at the helm of the ship and return it to its former glory. At the very least, we do know that Harmon attributes his comeback to efforts made by star Joel McHale.

Prior to being reinstated in his original job, the Harmon said that he hadn’t watched Season 4, but that changed by June 2013 (at the very least he needed to see what stories were told, what had been added to the continuity, and how the characters changed). He revealed his thoughts on the content saying he felt that the episodes were an “unflattering impression.” One would be challenged to find many Community fans who would disagree.

(Image credit: Sony)

Donald Glover Leaves The Show In The Early Episodes Of Season 5

June 2013 was a blissful month for Community fans. For four-plus weeks, we got to live with the knowledge that A) Season 5 was on the way, B) Dan Harmon was coming back, and C) the most toxic element of the cast was gone. It was a nice bubble to live in for a while… but it popped on July 8. That was the day it was announced that Donald Glover would not be appearing in the entirety of the new season and would be making his departure from the show after the first few episodes – allowing his character to get a proper sendoff.

The news was devastating for fans. Troy Barnes was loved as a part of Community because of his remarkable chemistry with Danny Pudi’s Abed Nadir, but he was also arguably the heart of the show and the most consistently hilarious character. The actor made the decision to leave because he wanted to have more time to focus on his music, and in retrospect, it’s damn impossible to blame him given that he has won five Grammy Awards in the time since.

Unfortunately, Donald Glover’s absence from the series created a hole that could never be filled; Dan Harmon admitted years later, after Community had ended, that the show, for all intents and purposes, “died” when he left.

(Image credit: Sony)

Community Moves From NBC To Yahoo! Screen

If you are wondering at this point if Community went on to become the first show to wait until its fifth season to become a smash hit, I have some disappointing news to drop on you: it didn’t. The show had already established a pattern of its ratings slipping more and more each year, and Season 5 proved to be a nadir despite the fact that Dan Harmon was back as showrunner. As a result, NBC made the decision to swing the axe and cancel the series. The dream of #SixSeasonsAndAMovie was swiftly killed… or at least that’s how it seemed at first.

The network announced Community’s cancellation in early May 2014, but not only did fans not give up on the show, Sony decided not to throw in the towel either. At first, things looked pretty dire, as both Netflix and Hulu opted to pass on Community Season 6, and Dan Harmon was expressing a bit of indifference. On the last day of June 2014, however, the series pulled off a Frankenstein act by inking a deal with the newly-formed Yahoo! Screen. Thirteen more episodes were ordered, with the door kept open for more pending great success on the young streaming service.

(Image credit: Sony)

Yvette Nicole Brown Is Unable To Return For Season 6

Getting a sixth season and one step closer to the goal of #SixSeasonsAndAMovie was huge for Community fans, but a few months after the Yahoo! Screen contract was closed, there were reports that yet another member of the Study Group/Save Greendale Committee/OG Greendale 7 would not be able to return. Prior to the start of production, Yvette Nicole Brown requested that she be released from her contract, as her father was sick and she wanted to be able to spend time with him – something she couldn’t do with a five month production schedule made up of 16-hour work days. The actress continued to work during that time, taking a role in the short-lived reboot of The Odd Couple, but that was doable because the experience filming a four-camera sitcom is much more streamlined than a single-camera show like Community.

Yvette Nicole Brown’s last performance as a lead on the show is in the Season 5 finale “Basic Sandwich,” but that isn’t the final appearance of Shirley Bennett. The character appears in the Season 6 premiere, “Ladders,” to establish that she has moved to Atlanta, Georgia to take care of her father and took a job as a private chef for a private investigator named Mr. Butcher (played by Steven Weber). She also has a brief cameo in the series finale – and to borrow a phrase from Shirley, it’s really nice.

(Image credit: Sony)

After Six Seasons, Community Comes To An End

Looking back, it’s pretty amazing that Community lasted as long as it did. Its ability to continue was almost entirely perpetuated by the general weakness of the NBC lineup (the fact that there weren’t any new shows demonstrating potential kept the network renewing the Dan Harmon-created series because it already had an established fanbase). It had even managed to survive its first cancellation. Sadly, when the second cancellation announcement came down from above, it proved to be the true nail in the coffin for the show.

There never existed a great deal of potential for a Season 7 anyway, but the writing on the wall became much clearer in October 2015 when the biggest advocate for the show left Yahoo! Screen for another studio gig. It was ultimately shown that Yahoo! Screen was a failed effort, and it eventually shut down, but at the very least everyone who loves Community will always have a special place for it in their heart... and it's not the end of the story.

(Image credit: Sony Pictures Television)

The Community Movie Gets A Green Light From Peacock

As fans will remember, the dream of #SixSeasonsAndAMovie began with the Season 2 episode "Paradigms of Human Memory" – with Abed loudly proclaiming during one of the many flashbacks that the new NBC series The Cape would experience a run of that specific length. As it turns out, The Cape only lasted one season, but Community fans took to seeing that prediction as the ideal totality for Dan Harmon's show. Now, that hope is set to become a reality.

In September 2022, it was officially announced that a deal had been signed for Community: The Movie to be made as an original feature for the streaming series Peacock. Dan Harmon was confirmed to be co-writing the script with Andrew Guest (a Community writer from the first two seasons of the show), and the press release confirmed Joel McHale, Danny Pudi, Alison Brie, Gillian Jacobs, Jim Rash and Ken Jeong would all return to play their original roles.

(Image credit: Sony Pictures Television)

Joel McHale Confirms Donald Glover Will Return As Troy Barnes In Community: The Movie

Looking at the list of cast members announced as part of Community: The Movie in the original press release, it's hard not to notice a couple of names missing. It's not surprising that Chevy Chase won't be back as Pierce Hawthorne (the character is dead, after all), but there was no mention of either Yvette Nicole Brown or Donald Glover. In January 2024, the former confirmed the return of Shirley Bennett during a guest spot on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and in June 2023, Joel McHale confirmed Troy Barnes will be back.

The actor known for playing the role of Jeff Winger confirmed Donald Glover's involvement in Community: The Movie as a guest on Kelly Ripa's podcast. And while we know nothing yet about what we will see from Troy following his trip around the world with LeVar Burton, we are beyond excited to see his reunion with Abed.

The future of Community remains open for now, and we’ll continue to update this feature as the Community movie moves further through development (you can be sure that we’ll add new sections about the start of production and news regarding other actors who will be joining in on the fun beyond the original cast. Be sure to keep tabs on this feature, and be on the lookout here on CinemaBlend for all of the latest big news about this beloved NBC sitcom.

4 Things The Community Movie Needs To Do, Or It Shouldn't Be Made

Eric Eisenberg — Fri, 22 May 2020 16:00:00 +0000

Within the world of Community, the idea of #SixSeasonsAndAMovie started as a joke, but it developed into a mission statement. It was originally used in Season 2’s “Paradigms of Human Memory” to make fun of the quickly cancelled drama series The Cape (remember The Cape?), but it was quickly adopted by the show’s passionate fanbase as the dream fate for the always-on-the-bubble sitcom. Eventually part of that vision was accomplished, as six seasons were produced between 2009 and 2015, airing on NBC and the shot-lived Yahoo! Screen, but fans are still waiting for Dan Harmon’s creation to return with a Community movie.

With a new audience discovering the series now that it is streaming on both Netflix and Hulu, there has been a resurgence in chatter about the show, and hopes are starting to be raised about a feature – but it would be smart for us fans to temper expectations. Not only has optimism been dashed many times before, but in thinking about what the Community movie could be, there are a few conditions that the project should seriously consider and satisfy before moving forward:

Bring Back The Entire Community Cast (Well, Except Chevy Chase)

One of the sadder elements of Community’s legacy is the fact that by the time the sixth season happened, the cast looked a lot different compared to Season 1. While Joel McHale, Allison Brie, Gillian Jacobs, Danny Pudi, and Jim Rash continued to do amazing work in the last two years, the absence of Chevy Chase (who left after Season 4), Donald Glover (who left in the middle of Season 5), and Yvette Nicole Brown (who left after Season 5) was definitely felt. The Study Group/Save Greendale Committee had a phenomenal camaraderie and energy as a complete unit, and not having that in the final run had an impact.

This in mind, the Community movie shouldn’t happen unless it can bring back the whole cast – or at least the whole cast as it existed in the first few episodes of Season 5 (given what happened behind the scenes of the show with Chevy Chase, nobody is expecting his return). To be blunt, if Donald Glover’s insane schedule means that he can’t be a part of the feature, and therefore it wouldn’t include a Troy and Abed reunion, what’s the point? The recent table read featuring the entire cast perfectly demonstrated the magic that comes from everyone being together, and a finale film would be incomplete without it.

Be A Real Movie Narratively, And Not Just A Series Of Community Episodes Strung Together

By nature of the industry, sitcom writing is its own beast – particularly when it comes to network show rolling out 20-25 episodes per year. Episodes are approximately 22 minutes including credits, and advertisement rollouts mid-show dictate a particular structure in the storytelling. While occasionally pointing directly at it, Community found a great rhythm in this mode, ultimately producing over 100 excellently paced narratives… but that’s something that should really be thrown out the window when it comes to sculpting a potential movie.

It’s not necessarily an easy feat, as the change up would have the project deviate from the formula of every other narrative that has been put together featuring these characters, but it feels necessary in the grand scheme. Whatever plot is put into action, it should be significant to warrant a full 90 minutes-plus of exploration, rather than give way to a new idea after half an hour. Given their experience and success in both the big and small screen mediums, Joe and Anthony Russo could be tremendous assets in guiding the project to find that more expansive story.

Scrape Together A Halfway Decent Budget

Because of its consistent low ratings, Community was never afforded any kind of big budget – instead forced to make due season after season with limited resources. That being said, some of the show’s finest moments arrived because Dan Harmon & Co. said “fuck it” and opted to make episodes that lived beyond their means, so to speak. The side effect of this was that bottle stories became a regular thing, but there isn’t a fan in the world who would complain in retrospect given how amazing those contained narratives are.

This creates a strange question when it comes to the Community movie. If the project does start to get up on its feet, the only option it may be faced with is working cheap – but if that’s the case, it might not be a worthy endeavor. The film wouldn’t need to be a blockbuster adventure, but it would be nice if the feature had the money required to get creative and think bigger. In support of this idea, it is noteworthy that there is an impressive number of popular pop culture figures on the show who have gone on to do some big and exciting things, and their involvement could possibly inspire a bigger studio investment.

Generate An Idea That Gets Dan Harmon Legitimately Excited

This one should probably go without saying, but we’re just going to say it anyway. If a Community movie is going to happen, it shouldn’t be because Dan Harmon, the writers, the producers, and the stars feel like it’s something that fans were promised. It would be cute and super meta to see the beloved property achieve the goal of #SixSeasonsAndAMovie, but if there isn’t a story to be told, or at least one that inspires real excitement among the cast and crew, there shouldn’t be an obligation to go through with it anyway.

Listening to Dan Harmon talk about Community, there is no questioning that he has a genuine love for the content he made and the people he made it with – but if he’s satisfied with what exists, he shouldn’t feel pressure to force something. At this point, enough time has passed where an attitude of “If it happens, it happens” has taken over, and that should only change if the show’s creator is sparked to an idea that he is passionate about.

With five years having passed since the end of Community, where do you stand when it comes to the making of a movie? Do you think that it remains a viable prospect, or do you think it’s time for fans to move on and enjoy all of the amazing content that the veterans of the show have produced since “graduation?” Hit the comments section with your thoughts, feelings, and opinions on the matter, and stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for future updates about the project’s potential development.

Up next: 9 Great Community Stories We Learned From The Cast's Reunion

9 Great Community Stories We Learned From The Cast's Reunion

Eric Eisenberg — Thu, 14 May 2020 23:00:00 +0000

It is currently a great time to be a Community fan. Not only has the show recently arrived on Netflix, allowing even more people to discover its brilliance, but the cast recently reunited with showrunner Dan Harmon for a special table read that will be arriving online later this month. And as if all that weren’t enough, the making of said table read was also followed by the cast staying together for a special episode of the Ken Jeong and Joel McHale-hosted podcast The Darkest Timeline, and in it there are many great never-before-shared stories about the making of the show and the relationships within the group.

We highly recommend checking out the whole episode, as a big part of its greatness is just watching Dan Harmon and the cast banter, but we also wanted to take the time to highlight it by recognizing some of our favorite moments:

Danny Pudi Distinctly Remembers When He Knew Donald Glover Was Eventually Going To Leave The Show

In the years since his time on Community, Donald Glover has become one of the biggest stars in the world, not only earning awards for his FX series Atlanta, but also his music career. His albums have won him great acclaim and five Grammys – and it was actually because of the star’s Childish Gambino persona that Danny Pudi knew that it was only a matter of time before Glover left the show to pursue other endeavors.

The recent table read for the cast unlocked a lot of memories in the mind of the actor who starred as Abed on Community, and including a moment he shared with Donald Glover off-set. The duo was hanging out at the Blue Sky Tank on the Paramount Pictures lot (which is a parking lot when not in use), and Glover gave Pudi the chance to listen to his song “Heartbeat.” His immediate reaction?

Oh shit. You’re gone. You’re really good!

Given that “Heartbeat” was released in late 2011, it’s likely that Danny Pudi first heard the song while they were filming Season 3 of Community – and he would prove to be right a few years later, and Donald Glover amicably left the show in the middle of Season 5.

Donald Glover Had An Extremely Weird Character He Played Behind The Scenes

As discussed throughout the reunion, a lot of the magic in Community was found because of the freedom that the cast was given to improvise – and evidently the comedic improvisation and role playing didn’t end when the cameras stopped rolling. As revealed in rather blunt terms during the recording, Donald Glover had a character he slipped into during breaks who was a homeless man obsessed with trying to perform fellatio on Joel McHale.

Rather than be anything physical, the game was that Glover’s character would try and trick McHale into putting his penis into his mouth. The two stars provided some examples for context:

Donald Glover: I think we all know the best one was, 'There's an alien coming that's cutting off penises, and you have to hide your penis in my mouth to make sure it's safe.'Joel McHale: One was like 'Bad news. The government has made dicks illegal. Quick, hide yours in my mouth.’Donald Glover: ‘No time to explain.’

Ken Jeong Got Blackout Drunk And Started Ranting At Donald Glover At A Cast Reunion Dinner

The entire Community reunion podcast special is a testament to how much all of these people legitimately enjoy each other’s company, but that sentiment apparently went a touch overboard last fall when the cast and Dan Harmon got together for a dinner. For an unexplained reason, Ken Jeong had been drinking a few beers throughout the day before the event, and so by the time he finished drinking his way through the evening he was blackout drunk.

As described by Jim Rash, who says he has a lot of video from the night, Ken Jeong wound up spending the night screaming in the faces of Danny Pudi and Donald Glover as though they were a mile apart instead of just a few feet, and his rantings to Glover specifically included lauding him for his work on something called Alien Bralien – a project that doesn’t exist.

Ken Jeong Would Not Stop Improvising His Breakdance Exit In One Episode

Continuing the discussion from earlier, improvisation was definitely a major asset on the set of Community given the impressive talent of the cast, but one thing revealed during the reunion was that it was also occasionally a way that the schedule got strained. A first act scene in the second season episode “Accounting For Lawyers” is a prime example, as Ken Jeong spent take after take expanding on a bit even when he was told to simplify what he was doing.

The end of a scene where Chang talks to the study group about the school’s upcoming Pop 'n' Lock-a-thon, Ken Jeong was told to perform breakdance moves while heading out the door, and they kept being more elaborate take after take. Given that the subject came up when Alison Brie talked about it as a scene that was hard to get through because of breaking, Ken Jeong surely felt egged on by his co-stars, and as a result ignored Dan Harmon’s pleas for something faster. Said the showrunner,

You can't cut around that. You can't just dissolve to an establishing shot in New York. We were hostages.

Gillian Jacobs Caught Ken Jeong Mid-Rant On The Set Of Dr. Ken, And Started Cracking Up

Following the discussion of his unstoppable improv, Ken Jeong delivered a blanket apology to everyone, and explained that he has a better perspective on it all now because of his time making Dr. Ken – which he co-created, produced, and starred in following the end of Community. Having been in the position that Dan Harmon was in, he now has a better understanding of the stress involved in making a network series… and that revelation led Gillian Jacobs to share a funny anecdote.

A few years ago, Jacobs and Ken Jeong were both on the Sony Pictures lot at the same time, the former working on an undisclosed project, and the latter shooting promos for Dr. Ken, and so one day she wandered over to the set to say hello to her former co-star. It turned out that her timing wasn’t wonderful, as when she found Jeong he was in the middle of yelling at some co-workers. Rather than try and slip away, though, Jacobs instead found herself bursting out laughing because she found the situation strangely ridiculous.

Weird as it sounds, Ken Jeong added to Gillian Jacobs story by saying that he was ultimately grateful for her presence:

I was in a mood, and I behaved badly and then seeing Gillian... It was actually, and I've never told you this, just seeing you calmed me down – because of you. And I think I think the cast and the producers were happy when you were there because when I would see a friend and I would just start joking around.

Community’s Budget Was So Small That The Art Department Decorated The Wrap Party

Community was never a big ratings hit, and thus never a big money-earner for the studio, and a natural extension of that was the series having a thin budget to work with year after year. This wasn’t just in the later seasons either, as the reunion podcast episode reveals serious penny pinching was happening from the beginning. For example, the art department wasn’t able to fully enjoy the Season 1 wrap party because the event was held on set, and they were given the task of both decorating it, and deconstructing it.

Said Dan Harmon,

They couldn't drink at the wrap party because then they'd be drinking while doing their job, which was to take down the wrap party. That's not a joke. 'Hey, aren't you working electrical? Give me that champagne. What are you doing? And get this shit outta here when we go home!’

Rough.

Community’s Line Producer Straight-Up Lied To Dan Harmon About The Show’s Budget

The budget of Community was a popular topic of conversation during the reunion, and through the back and forth a kind of paradox was discovered. While the cast and crew was repeatedly told how little money the show had, there were also some major expenditures – with two examples being Professor Hickey’s desk machine and Shirley Island in the Season 5 episode “Geothermal Escapism.” So how did that happen? The answer was provided by Ken Jeong later in the episode, with the actor/filmmaker revealing a secret that producer Patrick Kienlen shared when the two worked together on Dr. Ken:

Pat was my line producer as well, and I would ask him... because I heard the show was always budget neutral or even under budget, on Community. Pat just straight up said, 'Simple: I would just lie to Dan [Harmon].... I would just straight up lie to Dan and say I got nothing.’

Some say that limitations breed creativity, so I guess we should thank him?

There Was A Possum Living In Community’s Prop Room

One of the weird details featured in “Documentary Filmmaking: Redux” is a bit that finds Dean Pelton in possession of a strange new pet: a possum that lives in his office. It’s strange and funny, perfectly matching the tone of Community – but what makes it even better is the fact that it seems like it was inspired by a funny behind-the-scenes incident. Specifically, at one point during the show’s production there was a possum that took up residence in the prop room.

It was a memory that Gillian Jacobs brought into the conversation about Community’s limited budget, and Donald Glover added that it provided him a funny revelation:

That was the first time that was like, 'Oh, we're poor. We're really poor. There's a possum in the prop room!'... It was like a fucking Simpsons joke. I'm walking in there and they're feeding a possum that came in through the walls. I'm like, 'Wow, this is hilarious.'

It would be a struggle to find any actor that really loves to do night shoots, as there’s simply not a lot that’s enjoy able about being up at 3am waiting around while you get to perform the same scene over and over again from multiple angles. In the context of Community, making the Season 1 Halloween episode “Introduction To Statistics” was rough because it required the stars to be on call for some late nights – but it was a particularly difficult experience for Gillian Jacobs and Yvette Nicole-Brown, because there was one scene where they were both basically blind.

Jacobs described the night, saying,

They came to get Yvette and I, it was like 4:00 AM maybe, to come in and dance at the end of the episode. And I had never experienced until this show that if you stay up for too long your contacts kind of fuse to your eyes. Everything goes blurry. And I was like, 'I can't see!' [Yvette] led me to the set dressed as a squirrel... I'm dressed as a squirrel, I can't see, and they just shove solo cups in our hands and go, 'Dance!'

It was only then that Yvette Nicole-Brown revealed to Gillian Jacobs for the first time that she too was dealing with the same contact lenses issue that night, creating a literal circumstance of the blind leading the blind.

These are just some of the highlights from the Darkest Timeline episode, so if you like what you’ve read here, go and give it a listen yourself.

Up next: 11 Community Inside Jokes That Are Still Completely Brilliant

Could Community Actually Get A Movie After Netflix Success? Dan Harmon Has Good News

Nick Venable — Mon, 11 May 2020 21:44:36 +0000

It's somehow been over eleven years since the students and faculty from Greendale Community College entered our lives, but fans are ready for Dean Pelton to enter us all over again. (Wait, did the Dean write that sentence?) Community's renewed popularity on Netflix has kicked some of the dust off the #SixSeasonsAndAMovie argument, and fans are once again wondering if Jeff, Britta, Abed and everyone else might one day get their own feature film. For the first time in a while, creator Dan Harmon has some forward-leaning news.

Dan Harmon currently has Rick and Morty Season 4 airing on Adult Swim, and is in the process of working on Season 5. You know what else he's doing? Apparently having conversations about making more Community happen! Below is the encouraging message Harmon gave to TheWrap, saying that Community's upticks in popularity have definite effects on the marketplace. In his words:

When the marketplace gets affected, conversations happen. And when conversations happen, things happen. I mean, when you’re part of the Community family, you learn never to raise expectations, keep ‘em nice and low and then be pleasantly surprised. So I can say that there are conversations happening that people would want to be happening and that I’m very, very excited about the coming months.

By all means, long-time Community fans have watched the show go through about as many hardships as a fan-beloved comedy could without completely falling apart. From Dan Harmon's exit in Season 4 to the assortment of casting changes to the NBC cancellation to the Yahoo Screen resurrection, Community soared on where other shows likely would have fallen hard. So while tenacious fans do indeed know better than to form lofty expectations about the show's future, we also know that Community is a survivor.

As well, it's known that MCU directors Anthony and Joe Russo, who directed several Community episodes in its first three seasons, have expressed interest in directing a potential feature if the details would work out. Netflix-friendly Joel McHale has also talked about there being more murmurings about a follow-up Community project, so here's hoping those murmurs and conversations turn into full-blown big-budget agreements in the nearest future.

Of course, Community recently cause big waves by announcing nearly the entire cast (minus the plethora of guest stars) would be reuniting for a video chat table read of the Season 5 episode "Cooperative Polygraphy." The charitable event should be a good time for all, with The Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal joining the fun as a special guest, which probably means Walton Goggins isn't reprising his role.

The group also recorded an episode of Joel McHale and Ken Jeong's podcast The Darkest Timeline, in which former co-star Donald Glover realized the cast had kept him out of the loop on their big group chat. Everyone should know by now not to keep Glover out of anything.

All six seasons of Community are currently available to stream on Netflix and Hulu, so keep watching it and keep talking about it and keep on making the marketplace take notice! In the meantime, head to our Summer 2020 TV premiere schedule to see all the new and returning shows that are on the way.

Up next: 11 Community Inside Jokes That Are Still Completely Brilliant

11 Community Inside Jokes That Are Still Completely Brilliant

Eric Eisenberg — Sat, 09 May 2020 23:00:00 +0000

There are many comedy shows that fail to hold up on rewatch, particularly if you have distinct memories of all the most hilarious moments, but Community definitely isn’t one of those shows. This is partially because few series in modern television possess such impressive wit, and creativity, but mostly because episodes consistently operate on multiple levels. In addition to its strange setups and fantastic dialogue, it also regularly features layered background jokes and meta narratives. And with the show now streaming on both Netflix and Hulu, audiences everywhere are starting to recognize the brilliance.

To write in detail about every inside joke in Community would result in an untenable and unwieldy feature, so instead we have chosen to highlight 11 of the best, plucked from the show’s entire six season run:

Abed Helps A Pregnant Couple

Toward the end of Season 2, Abed is able to knowledgeably jump into action when Shirley goes into labor during the Anthropology final, and while it’s a confusing turn of events for his classmates, he explains that he helped deliver a baby earlier in the year. Watching this, some viewers may be a bit confused – but not those who really pay attention to “The Psychology Of Letting Go.” While Jeff works to convince Pierce his mother is dead and not in a lava lamp, and Annie and Britta work to raise money during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Abed can be seen in the background of select scenes befriending a pregnant couple and then serving as their doula.

Beetlejuice-Beetlejuice-Beetlejuice

It’s unreasonable to think that any television show would track the specific number of references it makes to the classic Tim Burton film Beetlejuice, but that’s precisely what Community did in the construction of a joke that took about three years to pay off. Referencing the fact that reciting Beetlejuice’s name three times summons him, the show has one episode in each of its first three seasons (“Communication Studies,” “Cooperative Calligraphy,” and “Horror Fiction In Seven Spooky Steps”) where the name is said – and when the name is said a third time (conveniently during a Halloween-set story), a person dressed like the Michael Keaton character pops up in the background. Perfection.

Jeff’s Special Underwear

The Beetlejuice gag is amazing all by itself, but it’s also noteworthy in that it also points to another weird running gag in Community. The aforementioned reference in “Cooperative Calligraphy” has Britta linking the style of the Tim Burton movie to the striped underwear that Jeff typically wears, and in addition to being a hint at Jeff and Britta’s “secret sex,” it’s also part of a larger bit concerning Jeff’s undergarments. In addition to Jeff being featured in striped underwear in multiple episodes (“Physical Education,” “Anthropology 101,” “Paradigms of Human Memory,” “Modern Warfare,” et. al), Dean Pelton can be seen wearing an identical pair during his mental breakdown in “Documentary Filmmaking: Redux” and again in "Economics Of Marine Biology."

Troy Loves Spider-Man

Following the end of Sam Raimi’s trilogy of Spider-Man movies, Sony Pictures announced that they were searching for an actor to play a new version of Peter Parker, and one campaign that got a lot of heat was the suggestion of Donald Glover for the role. The part ultimately went to Andrew Garfield, but Community offered Glover a consolation prize with some special references in the show – not only featuring Troy wearing Spider-Man pajamas in the Season 2 premiere, but giving him a Spidey tie in Season 3’s Law & Order-inspired “Basic Lupine Urology.” Oh, and did we mention that the conversation inspired the creation of Miles Morales in Marvel Comics? Because that’s pretty significant too.

“Daybreak” By Michael Haggis

If you finish binging a whole bunch of Community, and then find yourself humming a little ditty to yourself, there is a very good chance that the ditty in question is the instrumental track “Daybreak” by Michael Haggis. The catchy song is first played in “Horror Fiction In Seven Spooky Steps,” played during Abed’s overly-realistic slasher story, but by the end of the show’s run a bunch of characters can be heard humming it – and Fat Neil even plays it while serving as radio DJ in the episode “Pillows And Blankets.”

Shirley And Jeff Are Around The Same Age

Being an adult community college student, Shirley demonstrates a certain sensitivity about her age in the first few seasons of Community, and one of her most frequent deflections finds her comparing herself to Jeff – who regularly works to align himself with the younger members of the study group (because he too is sensitive about his age). It’s in “Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism” that it becomes a wonderfully layered bit, however, as it’s revealed not only that Shirley is correct in comparing herself to Jeff, but that they actually had an unfortunate conflict when they were pre-teens. The connection between the two was later taken a step further with events in Season 4’s “Heroic Origins,” but Season 3 is the really great payoff.

Living On The Bubble

Despite inspiring a devoted fanbase, Community wasn’t a supremely popular show when it first aired on NBC, and the low ratings regularly left it as a potential candidate for the chopping block at the end of every season – or “on the bubble” to use industry lingo. This surely created a certain extra level of stress for everyone involved with the show, but one way that stress was relieved was with the series regularly hinting at the looming possibility of cancelation. Sometimes it’s subtle (like when Abed became distressed about Cougar Town going on hiatus in the Season 3 premiere, or starting proclaiming that The Cape should get six seasons and a movie in “Paradigms Of Human Memory”), and other times its overt (like the “Depends on what fails” tag at the end of Season 5’s “Basic Sandwich.”)

Community’s War On Television

Being a cult show surviving based on the failures of new NBC programming, Community had few fucks to give throughout its run, and it regularly demonstrated it by throwing proverbial spitballs at the more-popular-but-far-shallower shows also on the air at the time. Glee is a big target throughout the earlier seasons, the Dan Harmon series regularly mocking the singalong drama for not writing any original songs (as seen in “Modern Warfare” and “Regional Holiday Music”), and “Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking” basically exists to mock the stylistic setup of The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Modern Family (in Abed’s words: “It's easier to tell a complex story when you can just cut to people explaining things to the camera.”)

The Cougar Town Crossover

In Season 2’s “Critical Film Studies,” a private dinner between Abed and Jeff escalates when the former tells the latter about an opportunity that he got to be on an episode of his favorite show, Cougar Town, and how the special day ended with him pooping his pants. It’s a weird and funny bit by itself, but the specialness of Community eventually took it to the next level. Actor Danny Pudi wound up making an appearance on the ABC series (playing an extra who mysterious sprints off at the end of a scene in "Something Good Coming" – a reference to the aforementioned pants pooping), and Cougar Town’s Busy Phillips and Dan Byrd can briefly be seen at the end of the Star Wars-inspired Season 2 finale “For A Few Paintballs More.”

The Gas Leak Year

Among Community fans, Season 4 is not exceptionally well-regarded. This is the stretch of the series when Dan Harmon was no longer serving as showrunner, having been fired due to behind-the-scenes incidents, and while there are a few solid episodes scattered in it, there are a number of stinkers, and it’s all-around not as sharp. Of course, Harmon eventually came back, and when he did he decided to turn the whole circumstance into a meta joke, having members of the study group in Season 5 and 6 refer to the period as “the gas leak year” – suggesting that any kind of out-of-character behavior came as a result of fume-related brain damage.

Is there a Community inside/background joke that you love that we didn’t feature here? Hit the comments section with your favorites, and let us know if we pointed out some that you never noticed before!

How Rick And Morty Broke Canon To Give Us Something New

mick.joest@CinemaBlend.com (Mick Joest) — Thu, 07 May 2020 21:42:16 +0000

Warning! The following contains spoilers for the Rick and Morty episode "Never Ricking Morty." Read at your own risk!

Rick and Morty made its triumphant return to television recently, really exploding out of the gate (or train station, as it were) with one of its most ambitious episodes to date. "Never Ricking Morty" found the heroes on a Rick-obsessed train, yet neither Rick or Morty could remember why they were there.

The episode took lots of left turns and made plenty of references to the show's past, but to what end? While it hasn't been explicitly confirmed by the show's creators behind the scenes, this episode made it pretty damned clear that the creative team is largely finished with being beholden to previous episodes' storylines and reveals, so fans shouldn't expect many of them to be revisited in the show's future. Let's dig into the episode, what it meant, and why Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon may have broken canon to give audiences something entirely different moving foward.

What Happened In "Never Ricking Morty"

As previously hinted at, a disguised Rick and Morty were traveling on a train that they didn't remember boarding, and Rick soon discovered thy were on a "anthology story train" that traveled in circles. To escape, the duo had to traverse the speeding vehicle via each of its completely random train cars, all without falling prey to the various storytelling traps.

The two were in constant danger throughout the episode (in which Morty educated fans about "cum gutters") and he and Rick nearly failed in their quest to escape the Story Lord. The narrative-centered villain harvested the duo for their marketability and plot lines, and it appeared the two might be trapped within this new reality forever.

That is, until Rick and Morty prayed to Jesus Christ himself to save them in their darkest hour. The hilarious out-of-character moment physically broke the machine that was controlling them, and Rick and Morty attempted their escape. Only when Rick got to the control console, he realized it was completely fake, and it was then revealed the train was actually a toy that Morty bought for Rick. The duo had a weird meta conversation about merchandising, and then the train's Jesus derailed the toy and it broke.

Yeah, I Watched The Episode, But What Did It Mean?

The train itself is a representation of Dan Harmon's signature story circle he uses in script-writing, which is a modified version of The Hero's Journey. Rick's plan to escape the train meant progressing through each stage of Harmon's creative process, eventually breaking it apart so that they could escape.

I can't say for sure who the Story Lord represents in this adventure, but it might very well be a stand-in for Adult Swim itself. The character is only concerned with keeping the duo marketable, and ensuring they revisit all the characters and plot threads from the show's past in order to keep fans happy. This is part of why Rick and Morty has been successful so far, and in order to keep this train literally rolling, Rick and Morty need to stay on that familiar path. In Adult Swim execs' eyes, now would likely be the worst time for the show to try something different, considering that monumental renewal order.

The scene that brought back all manner of previously established characters for a massive battle looked like straight-up fan fiction, and it's fitting in that regard that Evil Morty was at the head of it. The fandom has run itself ragged coming up with ways for Evil Morty's arc to be resolved ever since he took control of the Citadel of Ricks. I think this scene represents the idealized fan outcome, and the train's derailment at the end is a sign that such a culminating and conclusive resolution will never actually happen.

Then there's the bit at the end, which features an unhinged rant from "real world" Rick that it's all about pimping merch. Rick has always been about making that money, but in this case I think his comments may be an open acknowledgement by the show's creative team that they too are wishing for Rick and Morty to be as successful as possible. With that said, they're perhaps not so consumed by success and fan attention that they're content with adhering to the complicated and chaotic canon that has been set up across 3+ seasons.

But Wait, That Wasn't Even The REAL Rick And Morty, Right?

The Rick and Morty in the train clearly aren't the same Rick and Morty that were hanging out in the living room, which has led some fans to dismiss the entire message as non-canonical. That would be an easier argument to support had Rick and Morty never relayed that message before, but audiences saw the "real" Rick and Morty give a very similar speech in the Season 4 premiere.

In "Edge Of Tomorty," Rick and Morty ran through a large chunk of the premise of "Never Ricking Morty" though one quick conversation at the end. That discussion presumably laid out exactly what the series intends to do going forward, before Summer absolutely ruined everything by being gross.

The overall gist is that Rick and Morty may still hearken back to prior plots and characters, but the creative team is going to do what it wants without being so strictly guided by canon. Keep in mind that Adult Swim's renewal was for 70 episodes, which is a lot for a densely animated show like this. In its first seasons, the more serialized Rick and Morty was seemingly on the cancellation bubble regardless of its perceived success. Perhaps the idea of tying every story element together was more plausible when Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland thought the output would be more limited, but the renewal gives the show a lot more ground to spread its absurdity-embracing wings.

Ultimately, I think this is for the best. Based on the past few seasons of Rick and Morty, the last thing fans should want to do is rain pressure down on Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland to jigsaw-piece together the ridiculous world that they've created. They've earned the ability to write what they enjoy, canonical or otherwise, without having to face fans who populate comment sections with gripes that an episode didn't feature Mr. Poopybutthole in a highly specific way, or didn't give Evil Morty his day of reckoning.

Up next: Solar Opposites: Why Rick And Morty Fans Should Be Excited For Justin Roiland's New Hulu Show

Rick and Morty airs new episodes on Adult Swim Sundays at 11:30 p.m. ET. Let us know in the comments whether you agree with me or not, and stay with CinemaBlend for more on the series, and for more on what's happening in the world of television and movies.

Rick And Morty Caused A Massive Spike On Google For Gross NSFW Term

mick.joest@CinemaBlend.com (Mick Joest) — Wed, 06 May 2020 21:01:17 +0000

Warning! The following contains spoilers for the Rick and Morty episode "Never Ricking Morty." Read at your own risk!

Following an extended midseason break, Rick and Morty returned to Adult Swim with the back half of Season 4, and as usual, the world felt the impact. This latest hullaballoo wasn't quite a szechuan sauce type of incident, but it did get the fandom curious about a term that doesn't come up often in everyday conversations. The NSFW terms that wormed its way through Rick and Morty viewers' brains, for those who aren't already aware, is "cum gutters." Lovely, no?

Believe it or not, "cum gutters" wasn't Googled very often in the days immediately leading up to Rick and Morty's spring premiere. In fact, the term's score on Google Trends ranked less than 1.0, where users' interest is set on a scale of 100. That distinction definitely changed when the Adult Swim series returned with "Never Ricking Morty," which premiered at around 11:30 p.m. ET on Sunday. By midnight of that night, the search interest in "cum gutters" had skyrocketed all the way up to 100, and its has been consistently getting searched for ever since.

For those unaware of what cum gutters are, that's probably a question best answered with episodic context. Here's the scene in question, which featured Morty grossing out Rick with his knowledge of such a disgusting and visually arresting slang term.

Morty was referring to the spots on Tickets Please Guy's body that lead from the hip toward the groin. For men with exceptionally good physiques, that area is notably concave in a manner that would resemble a gutter on each side. I'm sure at this point I don't need to invoke any bodily fluids to explain the rest, but just use your imagination and it's probably correct.

For a bit of fun additional info on this joke, there may be an online "paper trail" of Rick and Morty's creative team discussing this gag in particular. The term "cum gutters" was referenced in Dan Harmon's now concluded podcast Harmontown back in May of 2019, with a specific reference to Jesus having them. Whether it was a coincidence or not, Jesus also made a cameo in "Never Ricking Morty," and yes, he was just as impressively cut as Taking Please Guy.

Rick and Morty broke continuity and destroyed their own marketability, as it were, by praying to Jesus, which helped them escape the Story Train and inevitably showed the audience what was actually happening with the characters. In reality, the sentience-filled train was a toy that Morty purchased for Rick at the Citadel of Ricks, though it became unclear if the Rick and Morty in the train were the same Rick and Morty later shown in the living room. It was bizarre, but hey, that's what makes this show so great and keeps it out the gutter, and I mean any kind of gutter.

Up next: Solar Opposites: Why Rick And Morty Fans Should Be Excited For Justin Roiland's New Hulu Show

Rick and Morty airs on Adult Swim on Sunday nights at 11:30 p.m. ET. Continue to stick with CinemaBlend for more on the series, and for the latest movie and television news happening in 2020 and beyond.

Rick And Morty's Dan Harmon Has A New Show With Danny DeVito Playing The Devil

Nick Venable — Fri, 24 Apr 2020 18:18:47 +0000

When comedic geniuses from four of the funniest TV shows of the past decade combine forces, only good things can come, right? That's what FX is hoping with the in-the-works project Little Demon, which will team Community mastermind and Rick and Morty's Dan Harmon with It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's dependable weapon Danny DeVito and Parks and Recreation vet Aubrey Plaza. Oh yeah, and DeVito will be playing Satan himself.

FX has granted an official pilot order for Little Demon, which will be a half-hour animated comedy that takes place 13 years after the Danny DeVito-voiced Devil impregnated a woman voiced by Aubrey Plaza. Now the mother and her teen Antichrist (voiced by Lucy DeVito) are trying to lead a casual life without incident in Delaware, but they are forever being hassled by supernatural threats. One of those threats is Satan, who has his sights on taking custody of his daughter's soul, according to Deadline.

Lucy DeVito is, of course, the real-life daughter of Danny DeVito, which adds an extra layer of interest beyond the most obvious layer: Danny DeVito voicing Satan! After so many years of making demonic noises and saying (and doing) the most godawful things, it's only fitting for him to serve as Satan in some fictional universe's canon. The performance isn't going to be nearly as frightening as his turn as the Penguin in Batman Returns, but I do hope he references that role.

LIttle Demon will have Rick and Morty's Dan Harmon on as an executive producer. The project was created by Darcy Fowler (Deadbeat), Kieran Valla (Stop the Bleeding) and Seth Kirschner (30 Rock), an acting/writing trio that goes by the moniker the "Terror Team." Aubrey Plaza has collaborated with the group for years, which is another noteworthy behind-the-scenes connection.

Danny DeVito and Lucy DeVito will be executive producing through the former's Jersey Films 2nd Avenue, with FX Productions also behind it. DeVito is obviously well known at FX for having starred on It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia for 13 of its 14 seasons. Aubrey Plaza is also a friend to the network for her run as Lenny Busker through three seasons of Legion.

ShadowMachine will be the animation studio behind Little Demon. To bring things back around to the funniest shows of the past decade, ShadowMachine was behind Netflix's near-perfect BoJack Horseman, as well as the short-lived Tuca & Bertie, TBS' Final Space and Facebook's Human Discoveries.

FXX's Archer is another easy entry in the funniest TV show conversation, but the network hasn't been able to replicate the quick-witted series' long-lasting success with other animated shows. The late-night entry Cake sought to shake things up as not only a medley of short-form entries in all manner of formats, but also as an incubator for potential future series.

It's reported that production on Little Demon will kick off as early as a week from now, with animated projects the only traditional form of scripted programming that is moving forward during Hollywood's break. Stay tuned to find out if this project has a devil of a shot of making it to series.

9 Careers That Really Took Off After Community Ended

Eric Eisenberg — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 10:00:00 +0000

Community will long be remembered as one of the best sitcoms of the modern era, and that comes as an extension of having some incredible talent both in front of and behind the camera. From the genius mind of Dan Harmon serving as showrunner, to the incredible talents of Donald Glover on screen, every aspect of the show had brilliant people contributing to the overall greatness. All you have to do is watch the NBC series to understand this, but it’s also very much reflected in all of the success that key contributors have had in the years since being a part of it.

Looking back on the six seasons of the series, there are specifically nine people who really stand out when it comes to reflecting on how far they’ve come since adding their particular genius to the excellence that is Community, and so we’ve put together this feature highlighting their journeys:

Dan Harmon

In creating Community, Dan Harmon earned a legion of lifelong fans. The show may not have ever been a ratings giant, but the people who tuned into its frequency deeply connected with what the showrunner was doing, and it’s become a cult favorite as a result. Ultimately, despite some of the behind-the-scenes controversies, the NBC series provided Harmon with a passionate fanbase – and that fanbase has only gotten bigger thanks to the work he’s been doing since, namely the Adult Swim hit Rick & Morty.

The end of Community actually overlapped with the launch of Rick & Morty, as the first season of the latter aired concurrently with the second-to-last season of the former, but the animated series has successfully captured the attention of a far bigger audience, and now it’s easily one of the most popular shows currently airing. One can only hope that their appreciation of the cartoon is getting people to discover Community, especially since its now so easily accessible streaming on Netflix.

Alison Brie

When Alison Brie began her run as bright overachiever Annie Edison on Community, a certain cross-section of the TV watching audience was already familiar with her work. By 2009, she had been featured in two seasons of the AMC series Mad Men, playing the young housewife of Vincent Kartheiser's Pete Campbell. That being said, the sitcom allowed audiences to see Brie’s very real range, giving her the opportunity to play a very different character than Trudy Campbell, and we’ve seen a whole lot more of it in the years since both shows ended.

Nowadays, Alison Brie is probably best known for her central role as Ruth Wilder on the Netflix series GLOW, which is scheduled to release its fourth season later this year, but she has also been killing it on the voice actor front. In addition to consistently delivering a hilarious and emotional performance as Diane Nguyen on the brilliant series Bojack Horsemen, she has also played Unikitty in both of the LEGO Movies.

Donald Glover

For those who have been following his career for a while, the meteoric rise of Donald Glover has been extremely fun to watch. He was an internet star at first, creating hilarious content as part of the group Derrick Comedy (including the excellent feature Mystery Team), and from there he became a writer for 30 Rock – but it was really his work on Community that fully exposed his comedic brilliance and served as a key springboard to all of the amazing work he has done since.

Troy was unquestionably one of the best parts of Community, not only being half of the genius Troy & Abed duo, but also independently providing hilarity and surprising pathos. Dan Harmon has admitted that the best days of the NBC show ended when Donald Glover chose to leave, but you can’t exactly hate on him just because of his remarkable contributions to pop culture in the years since. His FX series Atlanta has won him two Emmys and a Golden Globe, and he has become a dominant force in music as well, winning five Grammys in the last two years. And did we mention he played young Lando Calrissian in Solo: A Star Wars Story, and adult Simba in The Lion King remake? Few stars shine as brightly as he does, and he’s only 36 years old.

Jim Rash

There were a hell of a lot of strange individuals who roamed the halls of Greendale Community College, but few were as ridiculous as Jim Rash’s Dean Pelton. The sexually confused administrator with a penchant for wearing crazy costumes regularly stood out as one of the most eccentric characters in Community, and consistently provided some of the most hilarious moments on the show. He was also a notable creative force behind the scenes, both as a writer and as a director – and that makes sense when you take note of his accomplishments beyond the NBC sitcom.

Community was in the midst of airing the second half of its third season when Jim Rash’s name was read by Angelina Jolie on the stage of the 84th Academy Awards, as he and co-writers Alexander Payne and Nat Faxon won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for their work on The Descendants. Since then, Rash has not only become a prominent voice actor, with regular roles on shows like Star Wars Resistance, Mike Tyson Mysteries, and Harley Quinn, but he's also teamed with Nat Faxon and started directing features – the most recent being Downhill with Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Joe and Anthony Russo

When Joe and Anthony Russo were first hired to direct Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a lot of people were totally clueless as to who they were – but that group doesn’t include Community fans. That particular collection recognized the brothers as a dominant force behind the making of their favorite comedy series, collectively producing 48 episodes and directing more than 30 (including the pilot). Those who watched the NBC show recognized the impressive talent that Marvel Studios had brought into their fold by hiring the sibling filmmakers, and the Russos are considered two of the most famous blockbuster directors in the world.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier proved to be only the start of Joe and Anthony Russo’s career in the world of tentpole movies, as that hit was followed by Captain America: Civil War, and then the two-fer Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame (the latter now considered the biggest blockbuster of all time). It’s been great to watch as a Community fan, particularly because the Russos have consistently nodded towards their history with the show in their Marvel movies, specifically by including cameos by Jim Rash, Danny Pudi, Yvette Nicole Brown, and Ken Jeong.

Brie Larson

Community fans don’t love talking about Season 4 (alternatively referred to as the “Gas Leak Year”), but one part of that era of the show that even Dan Harmon loyalists can agree on is that it featured one of the series’ best character debuts. Having earned some recognition for roles in movies like 21 Jump Street, The Spectacular Now, and Short Term 12, Brie Larson was a welcomed addition to the Community family, playing a love interest of Abed’s who is introduced independently running a coat check at a school dance. The role blossomed into more excellence in Season 5, with Larson returning for two more episodes – but since then the actor’s profile has absolutely exploded.

It was shortly after being on Community that Brie Larson became an Academy Award winner for her stunning work in the drama Room, and now that acclaim has been paired with massive box office success as well. Like the Russo brothers, Larson also went on to become a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and in 2019 her debut superhero solo film Captain Marvel became a billion dollar hit. She is now considered one of the biggest stars in the industry, and it’s even more fun to watch her performances on Community now knowing that.

Justin Lin

Looking back on the history of Community, it was arguably the paintball epic “Modern Warfare” that really first helped the show not only capture attention, but start to define what it was going to be. Part of what made that episode so spectacular was because of the action-driven stylistic sensibilities that made it pop, and for that fans could thank director Justin Lin – who had a bit of experience under his belt having made both The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift and Fast & Furious. It was ultimately one of three episodes that Lin helmed for the show, all during the first season, as one year later the guy saw his career blow up with the blockbuster release of Fast Five.

Thanks to a bit of star power infusion courtesy of Dwayne Johnson, the fifth chapter of the Fast & Furious franchise made almost double what its predecessor did worldwide at the box office, and Justin Lin found himself established as a major Hollywood director. He went on to then direct Fast & Furious 6, another massive hit, and for his last big screen effort ventured into outer space for Star Trek Beyond. He’s since rejoined the Fast & Furious family, directing both the upcoming titles F9 and Fast & Furious 10, but Community fans will long recognize him for his contribution to the brilliant comedy series.

John Oliver

Admittedly John Oliver had made a name for himself prior to playing Professor Ian Duncan on Community. After all, he had spent years prior serving as a correspondent on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, receiving great praise for his contributions. His time on Dan Harmon’s show stands out, however, because it is one of the few examples of his live-action acting that exists – and it’s also the biggest production he was a part of prior to doing the work that he is best known for today.

John Oliver had to conclude his time as part of Community in 2014 (a.k.a. after Season 5) because that was when he started hosting Last Week Tonight With John Oliver – the show that he continues to host today. Oliver has earned great acclaim for the series, which is now airing its seventh season and has won a grand total of 16 Emmy awards. All the same, we’ll always remember him as the drunk Greendale professor who rapped about his penis and drinking tea at a school dance.

Who would you say has had the most success in the years since their contributions to Community? Hit the comments section with your thoughts!

One Rick And Morty Plot Was Originally Written For Dan Harmon's Community

Mae Abdulbaki — Wed, 01 Apr 2020 20:38:08 +0000

Four seasons in, and Rick and Morty has long been a beloved staple of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. The animated hit sees the titular characters venturing to different dimensions, realities, and planets. However, not every storyline that was crafted was initially intended for Rick and Morty to deal with. In fact, a Season 4 episode included a plot that was originally an idea from co-creator Dan Harmon’s neo-cult classic comedy Community.

Before Rick and Morty, Dan Harmon created and worked on the NBC comedy Community, which ran for six seasons (though not all of them had Harmon on board). Now that the quirk-driven sitcom is on Netflix, Harmon and the cast are reflecting on the show’s history. Speaking with The Independent, Harmon revealed that there was a discarded concept from Community that ended up being worked into an episode of Rick and Morty instead. In his words:

I can’t remember any ideas we always wanted to do but couldn’t crack. There was one concept that was always floating in the air which was the idea of doing an episode about Jeff Winger being a shy pooper. I ended up grafting that over to Rick and Morty.

For those who don’t know, Joel McHale played Jeff Winger on Community, a speech-heavy, womanizing lawyer who was disbarred after lying about having a bachelor’s degree. The "shy pooper" concept that Dan Harmon referenced was brought into the second episode in Rick and Morty’s fourth season, which was titled “The Old Man and the Seat.” The episode is a loose adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, just with more Rick poop.

In the episode’s subplot, Rick takes a universe detour so that he can use a private bathroom. When he finds out said lavatory is also being used by someone named Tony, Rick berates him for most of the episode. Despite it all, Tony remains intent on using the same bathroom as Rick, who later punishes Tony and plans to destroy him before eventually learning that Tony died in an attempt to live his life to the fullest. Womp-womp. Should this idea ever have made it into an episode of Community, Jeff Winger would have probably been in Tony’s place, but it would have likely been far less complicated.

Personally, I think it’s unfortunate that this concept was never used for Community because the writers on the series were creative enough to make it work. Plus, Jeff wasn't very shy about anything, ever. That said, I’m glad the idea made it to Rick and Morty and wasn’t just thrown out the window. And, for what it’s worth, “shy pooper” will always be a fairly funny description.

The second half of Rick and Morty’s Season 4 is set to premiere on May 3 on Adult Swim. Meanwhile, Community is now available to binge-watch on both Hulu and Netflix. For more on what to watch on the streaming service, be sure to check out our complete Netflix schedule.

Up next: Rick And Morty Gets Super Bloody In New Samurai Short Ahead Of Season 4 Return

Why Rick And Morty's Co-Creator Isn't Into Fans Saying 'Wubba Lubba Dub Dub' All The Time

Nick Venable — Thu, 18 Jul 2019 20:30:31 +0000

Ever since Rick and Morty joined the Adult Swim library back in 2013, co-creators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon have witnessed the show's fanbase head down some pretty dark avenues, from the Szechwan Sauce debacle to the rabid frustration over the time gaps between seasons. Thankfully, though, Season 4 is within spitting distance – it'll arrive in late fall – and the brains behind the animated hit have finally been able to speak in vague terms about what's coming first out of their massive 70-episode expansion.

It was while reflecting on the show's years of popularity, though, that Justin Roiland expounded upon why Rick and Morty's "Wubba lubba dub dub" is the show reference that he's the most sick of hearing at this point.

[My answer] would be the ‘Wubba lubba dub dub’ catchphrase. Only because we were making fun of the idea of stupid catchphrases. [At first] it wasn’t at all that and then it was funny because it was a dumb catchphrase, and then we subverted it by making it mean something really depressing. The hardcore fans get the irony behind it. But I think some fans maybe don’t? I hate to shit on anything because I don’t want to bum anybody out. I don’t want somebody to be like, ‘I love that!’ And then for them to read that Justin hates it. I don’t hate it.

To reiterate: Justin Roiland doesn't blanket-hate fans who say "Wubba lubba dub dub" and he doesn't exactly hate the act in and of itself. So don't go sending him evil messages saying otherwise.

HIs point is totally valid, though, from a creative standpoint. Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon faced an issue that a lot of writers face with with counter-culture comedies: when certain TV or genre stereotypes are introduced ironically and are then used non-ironically by audiences. Seinfeld, for example, wasn't created with the intent of turning "He's my butler," or "Go Devils!" into fan-beloved catchphrases that would stay in use for decades.

Yet, because it's impossible to predict what viewers will latch onto with such glee, one can never tell when intentionally garbled gibberish like "Wubba lubba dub dub" will be welcomed into pop culture jargon. I mean, Rick and Morty doesn't exactly use the traditional TV success playbook anyway, so it's only fitting for one of its most-quoted lines to be gobbledygook.

Or, at least it was gobbledygook before Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon provided a dark, if brief, backstory for "Wubba lubba dub dub." In Season 1's "Ricksy Business," the character Birdperson is introduced, and he explained to Morty that Ricky's favorite catchphrase actually means "I am in great pain, please help me" in the native Birdperson language.

Rick And Morty Creators Have Some Strong Thoughts About Game Of Thrones Season 8

Perhaps Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon thought that giving the catchphrase a more negative meaning would stop people from using it in celebratory manners the way that Rick initially did. But that would be underestimating the kinds of fans who wish that Mr. Meeseeks and Mr. Poopybutthole were real people. (As if they aren't already, right?)

In the same EW interview, Dan Harmon gave his own take on answering the question about overused catchphrases, but wasn't so negative about the quotes themselves as he was about those who ends up saying them. In his words:

This isn’t really an answer to the question, but it always bums me out when somebody uses a meme of a quote for the show and it’s being used by somebody who isn’t the greatest specimen. I hate it when a line from our show is being used by the meanest person in a conversation online. But it is what it is. It’s a popular show. I don’t think, ‘Oh God, I’ve done something terrible.’ I wish only saints and cool race car drivers liked our show, but then we wouldn’t make any money.

Sections of Rick and Morty's fanbase are known to be among the most vocal and vile in all of TV-dom, which is what turned that Szechwan sauce campaign into such a backwards disaster. And Dan Harmon is among the more outspoken TV creators when it comes to sexism and online bullying, so that answer is even more on brand than Justin Roiland's was.

We still don't know exactly when Season 4 of the Emmy-winning Rick and Morty is going to arrive, though it's scheduled to premiere on Adult Swim in November. It likely won't have anything to do with Kanye West when it does, but Season 5 could possibly alter that, because that's how the world works now. But it's been revealed that Season 4 will boast guest appearances from big names such as Sam Neill, Taika Waititi, Kathleen Turner and Paul Giamatti. Wubba lubba....wait, never mind. I cannot wait!

Rick And Morty Creators Have Some Strong Thoughts About Game Of Thrones Season 8

Laura Hurley — Fri, 21 Jun 2019 18:20:37 +0000

Game of Thrones brought its massive eight-season saga to an end in May, and to call it "divisive" would be a massive undersell. A lot of people were disappointed by the final season as a whole, and Daenerys' foreshadowed-but-abrupt decision to roast King's Landing will likely go down as the most polarizing twist in the series' history. As it happens, however, the two creators of another popular series are not among those upset by Game of Thrones Season 8. Rick and Morty creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland weighed in.

Dan Harmon, who made headlines last year for an offensive sketch that resurfaced online, revealed that he "was afraid to watch it" at first because he didn't want it to end, then shared his feelings once he did watch:

I knew it had to end, and I was as satisfied as I possibly could be watching a staple in my life wrap up and all of the characters taking each other out. As a showrunner, I was amazed at the amount they were able to accomplish — especially given the meta-reality of having run out of books to adapt. Watching The Hound fight The Mountain on the stairs, I was like, ‘This is all great, man.’ I was aware of the disappointment factor with [Daenerys Targaryen’s] dark turn. I’m not going to say fans are too cynical and ungrateful, but I guess I did just say that.

According to Dan Harmon's comments, fans are the ones with the problem rather than the show. His acknowledgment that the show had to deal with a big problem when it ran out of books to adapt is one noted by a lot of fans, but not all agree with Harmon that showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss accomplished something truly remarkable once they struck out on their own.

Good for Dan Harmon that he's such a fan! Viewers can probably all agree that Game of Thrones Season 8 looked great (when it wasn't too darkly lit to see anything), at the very least.

Dan Harmon didn't state that he was 100% thrilled with the eighth season, but "as satisfied as I possibly could be" isn't a bad endorsement! As for Rick and Morty fans, they don't have to worry about that show's final season any time soon since it scored that massive renewal. Of course, more than a year has passed since one of the co-creators said that big breaks between seasons aren't going to be an issue, and Season 4 has yet to happen, so...

Rick And Morty Season 4: What We Know So Far

But what of Dan Harmon's Rick and Morty co-creator, Justin Roiland, and his feelings about Game of Thrones Season 8? The sauce-loving Roiland, who's had a weird new Hulu show in the works, went on in the chat with EW to say this:

I echo all of Dan’s sentiments about the show. Structurally, I think it was great. I just selfishly wanted more episodes. I wanted to get to those plot points at a slower pace. I didn’t want it to end either. I wished it was stepped out over three more seasons, or three of four more episodes.

Justin Roiland's words about Game of Thrones Season 8 are less glowing than Dan Harmon's, and they actually echo the feelings of a lot of fans who were fine with the plot twists but simply wanted the show to have spent more time getting to them.

If there were more episodes or seasons, as Justin Roiland suggested, then perhaps "The Long Night" could have been longer, Dany's descent into Mad Queen territory could have been more nuanced, and the finale might have had higher stakes. Alas, we'll never know what could have been. Maybe Roiland's commentary suggests that Rick and Morty fans won't face the same issues in that show's final season, even if that's quite a long way off!

The fourth season of Rick and Morty is on the way to Adult Swim, but you may want to check out our summer TV premiere guide for some options sooner rather than later. Rick and Morty Season 4 won't debut on Adult Swim until November.

Rick And Morty + Kanye West = Season 4 Thing That Could Happen

Nick Venable — Thu, 16 May 2019 20:18:48 +0000

No one should expect a normal answer when someone hits up on the question "What's the latest thing Rick and Morty's Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland have done?" Not now, and not ever, but especially not now, as it's gone public that Harmon and Roiland have publicly offered rap mega-star Kanye West a chance to join Season 4 (or a future season) in a very special way.

Basically, Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland put an offer on the table for Kanye West to join the team for his very own Rick and Morty installment, which I assume would be called a Ye-pisode. Here's how the duo answered when asked if West, a self-proclaimed R&M superfan, could possibly be included in the show's future:

Roiland: Oh, I mean I dunno. Hang out and have him do a voice. Whatever. Kanye...anytime. Harmon: We'll give him an episode. I'm making it official. We have 70! He can have one. Kanye, you can have an episode. Roiland: Come in, hang out, write a Rick and Morty episode with us. It'll be the Kanye episode. I'm so down.

Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland's conversation with The Blast started off with such broad views as "We fucking love, Kanye, man," and then less than a minute later, Harmon was essentially putting a pen and paper in Kanye West's hands. I mean, West likely doesn't do his screenwriting on pen and paper, and probably has a telepathic link to any number of word processors.

The point is, Kanye West was granted his own Rick and Morty episode in less time than it takes to name his last five singles. Whether or not that's great news, so-so news, or an atrocity to all that is humane depends on where one fits into the spectrum of Ye's fandom. (And Rick and Morty's, to the same end.)

Rick And Morty Season 4: What We Know So Far

For those whose favorite musician and TV show are the Grammy-winning Kanye West and the Emmy-winning Rick and Morty, respectively, then this news likely indicates a match made in a heaven-shaped place. West has a lot of...unique thoughts and urges happening on a daily basis, and it's easy to think that the unbridled freedom of Rick and Morty and Adult Swim would allow him to tackle whatever subject matter he fancied.

For anyone who loves Rick and Morty but doesn't enjoy Kanye West's music, this concept still holds potential. After all, there are probably Rick and Morty fans out there who didn't like Dan Harmon's Community, so it's safe to assume that just entering Rick and Morty's universe makes everything that much better.

Kanye West music diehards who don't like Rick and Morty are probably getting the shortest end of the stick here. (Minus those who don't like either Ye or R&M, but it doesn't seem like those people would be reading this story with much interest.) I suppose it would be a unique novelty for rap-minded fans to see West's wild imagination come to life through scatological science fiction.

Speaking to the science-y part of things, here is Justin Roiland's assessment of Kanye West's brain-space.

If that guy had the support to do all the ideas he has in his head, it would be Elon Musk 2.0

Rick and Morty isn't the only TV venture that Kanye West would be attached to in the near future. (I mean, beyond his appearances on Keeping Up with the Kardashians.) There's that new project Omniverse, in which Jaden Smith will be playing a younger version of West, which is meant to thematically focus on the subconscious and the ego. Actually, I kind of want that show to be part of Rick and Morty Season 4 now. Is it too late?

Will the stars align for Kanye West to actually get his own Rick and Morty episode in Season 4, or is this all just a very weird...rrrrrrrrpp...pipe dream, Morty? As Dan Harmon said, the show got a 70-episode order from Adult Swim, so it's not like they don't have room to fit in whatever bizarro ideas get thrown around.

As it was recently announced, Rick and Morty will return to Adult Swim for Season 4 in November 2019, with a more specific date to be announced later. That's around two years after Season 3 debuted (not counting the April Fools Day premiere), so expect fans to be anxious.

Adult Swim Responds To Offensive Sketch From Rick And Morty Creator That Resurfaced Online

Nick Venable — Tue, 24 Jul 2018 20:36:52 +0000

On the heels of filmmaker James Gunn getting fired from Guardians of the Galaxy 3 over a series of offensive tweets from nearly a decade ago, Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon has come under fire for similarly taboo attempts at humor. Harmon's 2009 video Daryl resurfaced, and the quasi-spoof of Dexter featured jokes about rape and pedophilia. Harmon left Twitter shortly after, while issuing an apology for the video. All eyes were on Adult Swim to see how the studio would handle Harmon's future with Rick and Morty. Below is Adult Swim's official statement:

At Adult Swim, we seek out and encourage creative freedom and look to push the envelope in many ways, particularly around comedy. The offensive content of Dan's 2009 video that recently surfaced demonstrates poor judgement and does not reflect the type of content we seek out. Dan recognized his mistake at the time and has apologized. He understands there is no place for this type of content here at Adult Swim.

Adult Swim's statement, via TVLine, did not imply that Dan Harmon would be terminated from Rick and Morty or any other contracts he might have with the company. To be sure, it did not state that zero action would be taken in other ways, but Harmon and his fans can take comfort in knowing Adult Swim accepted the apology without any damaging decisions. The company did deem the video to be offensive, and made it clear such content is not welcome on their late-night schedule blocks.

In Daryl, which Dan Harmon produced, he plays a man attempting to stop serial killers, similar to Dexter Morgan. But instead of killing them in the present, Daryl would go back in time and sexually abuse the killers when they were children. Simulated rape on a baby doll was also shown within the video.

After the video made its way back to online eyeballs on Monday, Dan Harmon noticeably quit Twitter. He later issued the below apology.

In 2009, I made a 'pilot' which strove to parody the series Dexter and only succeeded in offending. I quickly realized the content was way too distasteful and took the video down immediately. Nobody should ever have to see what you saw and for that, I sincerely apologize.

Dan Harmon is just the latest entertainment personality to land in the crosshairs for offensive content from years past. Beyond James Gunn, we've also seen MSNBC's Sam Seder getting fired and subsequently rehired after a satirical 2009 tweet about Roman Polanski was brought out anew. And then there's Roseanne Barr, who was quickly fired from her ABC sitcom revival after tweeting out controversial remarks about former aide to President Obama, Valerie Jarrett.

For now, Rick and Morty is still set for a slew of new episodes to make up Season 4 and many more. There's no premiere date set just yet, but you can find the first three seasons streaming now on Hulu. And while waiting for more info, head to our summer premiere schedule.

The Community Movie Might Still Happen With A Big-Time Action Director

Adam Holmes — Wed, 22 Nov 2017 21:17:45 +0000

Six seasons and a movie. Originally a proclamation of how long the NBC series The Cape would last (it didn't), Community itself latched onto those words following its second season, and thanks to Yahoo! rescuing the TV series it was cancelled by NBC, it fulfilled the six seasons portion of the promise. The movie, however, has yet to surface, but Community creator Dan Harmon hasn't given up hope on bringing the Greendale gang into a theatrical setting. In fact, he's been talking with Fast & Furious 6 director Justin Lin about bringing the Community movie to life. According to Harmon:

I hope I'm not talking out of school by saying that. I'll get together with him every once in a while, or we'll have dinner, and we're talking --- we keep trying to figure out how to do this.

While Justin Lin is best well known for directing four of the Fast & Furious entries (which will become five if he signs on for Fast & Furious 9) and Star Trek Beyond, he also directed three episodes in Community Season 1, including "Modern Warfare," the first of the show's paintball-themed episodes. As Dan Harmon told The Wrap, Lin has "always been jazzed about the idea of doing a Community movie," so it sounds like he and Harmon are actively working to finally get this project off the ground. Given that Lin is primarily focusing on blockbuster movies nowadays, it might be difficult to fit a Community movie onto his already-packed plate, but at least he sounds enthusiastic about returning to Greendale Community College.

However, Justin Lin isn't the only big-time director who Dan Harmon has talked with about making the Community movie. While many of you know Joe and Anthony Russo best as the directors of the latter two Captain America movies and the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War, before joining the MCU, they helmed numerous Community episodes, albeit separately rather than as a duo. Harmon sees the Russos and Lin as the kind of people who have the clout to finally make the Community movie happen. However, given how busy the Russos are with their Marvel work and other projects, presumably Lin stands a better chance of actually directing the movie.

Back in September, Joel McHale, who played Jeff Winger, said he's hopeful the Community movie will eventually happen, although he's unsure if there will still be an "appetite" for it after a decade. Aside from getting a director and proper financing, the other major obstacle facing the Community movie is getting the ensemble cast back together. From Gillian Jacobs and Allison Brie starring in their own TV series to the uncertainty of Yvette Nicole Brown and Donald Glover returning to the Community world after they departed the series, it won't be an easy task getting all those familiar faces back in front of the camera. But if someone like Justin Lin were leading the charge alongside Dan Harmon, maybe that would help in finally moving this project from a concept to a reality.

Keep checking back with CinemaBlend for more news on what's happening with the Community movie, and look through our 2018 premiere guide to see what hits theaters next year.