Knowing that the answer to that is, as always, a collective cry of “More, lest we no longer have dying light to rage against!” accompanied by a torrent of GIFs, Amburg says, “I’d be lying if I told you that we have not had some very early and preliminary conversations that are very exciting about what a potential movie could be and who might direct it. It’s early but it’s completely in our thought process.” In other words, get settled, for we have many years of discussing what may or may not happen to Community to come—as a TV show, as a movie, as a hologram that will recount its legend to our ancestors from the steps of studio ruins, and, finally, as a pill that will stimulate the cerebral cortex directly to induce laughter tempered by worry and undefined longing.
Most immediately, Community is a show on Yahoo Screen, the search engine’s fledgling service that is, for now, free to stream and home to such shows as Losing It With John Stamos (a show that is not, apparently, about losing your virginity to John Stamos). And according to Amburg, Yahoo was so serious about making Community a cornerstone of building a name for that service, it was Yahoo who reached out to Sony during the latter’s talks with Hulu, and made a convincing pitch—one that was enough for Sony to overlook what Amburg calls a “significant offer” from Hulu. Yahoo’s counteroffer was so generous, apparently, Amburg says that there will be no difference from the production budget of the broadcast version, adding that Yahoo is “fully supporting it in their deal and beyond.” Echoing those sentiments, Yahoo’s Kathy Savitt told Vulture yesterday, “Our hope is…that it has a healthy future for season six and well beyond.”
Of course, any “beyond” would mean renegotiating contracts with all of the cast and crew, figuring out where a movie fits into all of this, and so on. But it does indicate just how determined Yahoo is to keep Community around for as long as possible, always pushing for just a little bit more. Which makes sense—after all, Yahoo is the Internet.
