It’s officially back to The Office, as a new series set in the Dunder Mifflin world gets picked up at Peacock.
The official logline of the series: “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.”
Lisa Katz, president of NBCUniversal Entertainment shared some details of the creative team and the foci of the series, “In partnership with Universal Television and led by the creative team of Greg Daniels and Michael Koman, 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.” Daniels developed the American version of Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s mockumentary of the same name and was showrunner from seasons 1-4 and in season 9. Daniels’ Prime Video series Upload, starring Robbie Amell, has been renewed for a fourth and final series.
Variety also reported that Domhnall Gleeson (The Patient, Ex Machina) and Sabrina Impacciatore (The White Lotus) were cast as part of the ensemble, but there is no official casting announcement.
Deadline previously reported that Daniels opened up a development room in January to work on this new iteration of The Office. On March 20, it was reported that Koman would be co-creating the series with Daniels. Koman co-created Nathan For You alongside Nathan Fielder and most recently was co-executive producer of Girls5eva. Daniels and Koman will also be executive producers along Gervais and Merchant. The series is set to stream on Peacock.
The US version of The Office ran from 2005 to 2013 and won five Primetime Emmy awards and starred Steve Carrell as Michael Scott, the hapless regional manager of the Dunder Mifflin Scranton branch. Carrell was nominated for six Emmys. The cast also included Rainn Wilson, John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer, B.J. Novak, Melora Hardin, David Denman, Leslie David Baker, Brian Baumgartner, Kate Flannery, Angela Kinsey, Oscar Nuñez, Phyllis Smith, Ed Helms, Mindy Kaling, and many more.
While talking to The Wrap about returning to The Office, Daniels said that the it would definitely not be a reboot, “I feel like we ended that story beautifully. The characters had closure. 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. So the notion of a reboot is not of interest.”
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Instead, Daniels compares this expansion to the Star Wars television series on Disney+, “The notion of maybe something like the way The Mandalorian is a new show in the Star Wars universe, you know what I mean? Something like the notion of this documentary crew doing a documentary about a different subject… But it doesn’t feel like ‘reboot’ would be the appropriate term for that.”
