More than a decade since the finale of the fan-favorite and award-winning sitcom The Office aired, its fictional universe is set to expand.
NBC streaming service Peacock announced Wednesday that it will pick up a new yet-untitled spinoff series from showrunners Greg Daniels, the screenwriter and producer who adapted the show for a U.S. audience, and Michael Koman, known for writing for Late Night With Conan O’Brien and co-creating Parks and Recreation. (Koman is also married to former The Office actress Ellie Kemper.)
Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, creators of the original British The Office and executive producers of the American adaptation that ran for nine seasons from 2005 to 2013, are also set to return as executive producers of the new series—as are executive producers Howard Klein and Ben Silverman and production studio Banijay Americas (formerly known as Reveille).
“It’s been more than ten years since the final episode of The Office aired on NBC, and the acclaimed comedy series continues to gain popularity and build new generations of fans on Peacock,” said Lisa Katz, president of NBCUniversal Entertainment. In 2019, NBC paid some $500 million for the exclusive rights to stream The Office on Peacock, after it had amassed a massive audience from years of being on Netflix. Peacock has put out “Superfan” extended episodes of the show since 2020 to maintain and grow The Office’s streaming viewership, which topped —more than any other show—in 2020.
Universal Television will produce the new series and production will begin in July, according to Peacock. The release date has not yet been revealed.
Here’s what we know so far about the spinoff.
What is the new show about?
The new show is neither a reboot nor a sequel of the beloved franchise. It’s also not a spinoff centered around any of the popular on-screen characters from the former series. Rather, the new show will be a follow-up centered around the mockumentary format of The Office.
“The documentary crew that immortalized Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch is in search of a new subject when they discover a dying historic Midwestern newspaper and the publisher trying to revive it with volunteer reporters,” Peacock said in its announcement. “This new series set in the universe of Dunder Mifflin introduces a new cast of characters in a fresh setting ripe for comedic storytelling: a daily newspaper,” said Katz.
Who will be in the new show?
Like The Office—which made stars of actors John Krasinski, Steve Carell, and more—the new show is set to revolve around an ensemble cast. Only two actors have been announced so far: Domhnall Gleeson and Sabrina Impacciatore.
Gleeson—an Irish actor known for his lead roles in sci-fi film Ex Machina and romantic comedy About Time, as well as supporting roles in the Star Wars and Harry Potter movies—recently co-starred alongside The Office’s former boss Steve Carell in the FX psychological thriller series The Patient, for which Gleeson earned Critics Choice and Golden Globes award nominations.
Impacciatore, an Italian actress, gained critical acclaim for her role as hotel manager Valentina on the second season of HBO’s celebrated dramedy 7 donne e un mistero in Rome, Italy, onDec. 15, 2021.
How did this new spinoff come about?
NBC has been keen to extend the life of The Office in one form or another since even before it ended.
A spinoff had been discussed, with a pilot planned for the following year. Daniels worked with The Office writer Michael Schur to create the new show, but the two ultimately decided a standalone series would work best, resulting in Parks and Recreation, which premiered on NBC in 2009 with no The Office tie-in other than its similar mockumentary format.
Another spinoff centered around Rainn Wilson’s character Dwight Schrute. But NBC ended up scrapping the idea, which was re-edited and aired as The Office’s ninth season’s 17th episode, which earned Wilson an Emmy nomination for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series.
Daniels told Vulture that other spinoff ideas that were scrapped included one that would follow Ed Helms’ character Andy and his suburban family—which was nixed after Modern Family came out with a similar premise—as well as ones focused on Craig Robinson’s character Daryll or another branch of Dunder Mifflin elsewhere.
In 2021, Variety reported that Dakota Johnson’s appearance in the series finale of The Office was supposed to set up a future series featuring fresh Dunder Mifflin employees. In 2017, The Hollywood Reporter reported that a reboot of the show was eyed for the 2018-2019 TV lineup, but it never materialized. The reboot was reportedly going to be set at the same Dunder Mifflin office in Scranton and was to incorporate a mix of old and new cast members, except for Carell’s Michael Scott.
Carell told The New York Times in 2018 that he has no plans of ever reviving his role, for which he won several acting awards. “I’ve never thought of it as a good idea,” he said. “I love it too much to ever want to do it again.”
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Leslie David Baker, who played salesman Stanley Hudson in The Office, launched a Kickstarter in 2020 to finance a web pilot episode of his proposed spinoff, Uncle Stan. The show would have followed Hudson coming out of retirement in Florida to help his nephew run a motorcycle and flower shop in Los Angeles. But in 2021, Baker returned over $110,000 in donations from fans who tried to help him launch the show, which he said had been set back by the COVID-19 pandemic and entertainment industry strikes.
News of a new project with Daniels back in creative control surfaced in late 2021. Daniels told The Hollywood Reporter in November that if The Office were to return, it would not be a reboot but instead something closer to Star Wars’ spinoff shows: “I would never want to redo that same show with a different cast, because I think we got the luckiest cast, the best cast ever, in TV, to do that show,” he said.
At the time, he hinted at the direction he was thinking: “Something like the notion of this documentary crew doing a documentary about a different subject,” he said. “That, I think, could be intriguing and creative. But I don’t even know what you would call that. I don’t know if that’s like a sister show or something.” Sources told Variety in January that Daniels was assembling a writers room to work on his new take on the series.
How have people reacted to the announcement?
Initial reactions on social media to the announcement of the new show are mixed—particularly from journalists and those in the real news media business.
There is certainly some excitement. Josh Awtry, senior vice president at Newsweek, wrote on Twitter: “BRB subscribing to a thousand Peacocks.”
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