Ken Jeong Speaks out on Eventual ‘Community’ Movie (Exclusive)

After Dan Harmon told Community fans this past summer that the “gears are turning” in terms of an eventual movie becoming a reality from the series’ “six seasons and a movie” mantra and a script was officially underway, Ken Jeong tells PopCulture.com that whatever may come, he is 100 percent up for it. After all, the show, which ran from 2009 to 2015 and became a classic among audiences has all the workings of a smart and timeless ensemble comedy — an aspect Jeong is forever humbled by.

“Like I’ve always said, if The Hangover made me famous, Community made me a better actor and if there’s ever a movie, I’m down for it, sight unseen,” he said while speaking up on the importance of eye health on behalf of Novartis and Xiidra with Dr. Ashley Brissette and discussing his own struggles with Dry Eye Disease, a chronic medical condition. “Those guys are my family, and I am just — I work with Joel McHale who was the star of Community — or so he tells me — and I work with him all the time and there’s always a part of Community in me and all the work that I do. Absolutely.”

This past April, Jeong’s co-star and friend, McHale, told PopCulture that there was a “better chance” of the movie happening now that the pandemic was over. “If you had asked me a year ago, I would have lied to you and said, ‘Oh, maybe.’ But in the back of my mind, I was like, ‘I don’t know how that’s going to happen.’ But I wasn’t going to ever say no,” McHale said at the time. “But I will say after the table read we did last — boy, it’s almost a year ago, April or May — that was the first time when I was like, ‘Oh, I think this might happen.’ And Donald [Glover] said in the interview, he would do it, and it just comes down to coming up with $100 million. […] Because I could use $100 million, and then we could make it.”

McHale adds it all boils down to Harmon at the end of the day. “Dan cryptically said on the internet, ‘Stay tuned’ and so, when you hear the guy that invented it, the guy that created the show say that, […] as opposed to a bonehead like me going, like, ‘It’s happening?’” he said. “He’s way more trustworthy than I am on that stuff.”

While the actor, who plays Jeff Winger on the sitcom, reiterates, despite his admission, “it’s not happening now” it doesn’t there isn’t a future for it. “I’d say there’s a better chance than there was. How about that?” he said. “I mean, nobody thought there was going to be electric surfboards, and then all of a sudden, go to any beach and now you see electric surfboards everywhere. So, it happens.”

For more with Ken Jeong, the Community movie and all you need to know, keep it locked to PopCulture.com for the latest.