With seemingly every passable sitcom being revived as content for the streaming wars, it seems inevitable that “The Office” will return in some capacity. The NBC sitcom was popular during its original run, but did not truly become a cultural phenomenon until years later when it emerged as one of the most binged shows on Netflix. When the series left Netflix for Peacock, it arguably attracted more attention than any of Peacock’s original shows, prompting speculation that Universal would try to bring the show back. Series creator Greg Daniels has been cautiously open to the idea in the past, and he recently offered more detail about what a potential return might look like.
Speaking with Collider about his science-fiction shows “Upload” and “Space Force,” Daniels was once again asked the inevitable question about potentially reviving “The Office.” He refused to rule out the idea, and admitted that NBC executives would likely be thrilled if he decided to do it. But Daniels was adamant that any revival would look very different from the original series. Rather than a continuation of the lives of Pam and Jim and Dwight, he envisions a potential reboot of “The Office” as a continuation of the world of the show. He even compared his idea to one of the more successful streaming series in recent memory, Disney’s “The Mandalorian.”
“I can’t tell whether fans would want more of it, and when I say more of it, I don’t think it would be the same characters,” he said. “I think it would just be sort of like an extension of the universe, you know what I mean, like the way ‘[The] Mandalorian’ is like an extension of Star Wars. But I don’t know if that would be something people would want or not, it’s hard to tell.”
The idea of a completely new show set in the world of “The Office” is reminiscent of Daniels’ original vision for “Parks and Recreation.” While that show never explicitly tied in with “The Office,” the first season was designed as a companion mockumentary in the same vein as the hit workplace comedy, before Daniels eventually stepped back and ceded more control to co-creator Michael Schur, who turned the show into something very different. Daniels said he imagines a new “The Office” would follow a similar path, but he is still not sure if it would be worth the effort.
“Everybody was like, ‘Eh, it’s not as good as ‘The Office’ Season 1.’ And then, you eventually keep plugging away and eventually people are like, ‘oh, I love this.’ It’s its own thing. And so I kind of feel like that would happen with a new show, but it would take a long time to do that,” he said. “And it’s like, do you want to wade through all the negativity in the beginning to get to the good part at the end? I don’t know.”
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