Roseanne, Will & Grace, Murphy Brown and now even Parks and Recreation (by way of a new scripted special to raise money and spirits during the coronavirus crisis) have all come back to life in varying degrees of success. Could The Office be far behind?
Rumors swirled the NBC comedy could be making a comeback with a mix of new and old cast members, but a show never materialized. It’s said The Office, which ran for nine seasons from 2005-2013, is one of the most streamed shows on Netflix. Big bucks were shelled out to get it for NBCUniversal’s new streaming service Peacock. Could a new version also make its way onto the new platform? Greg Daniels created the show for American television and told The Hollywood Reporter he felt like the show and the stories of the various characters had a solid ending.
“I loved doing The Office more than anything. And if we were going to revisit it, I would want to do it. But I am doing these two shows now, so in the near term I’m definitely doing that. I think when all these rumors started flying around it was when they rebooted Will & Grace. I think people were assuming that an Office reboot would be pretty much like that, getting the entire cast back together and just continuing where we left off,” Daniels said.
“I went back to run the show in season nine after discussing it with the main cast and part of our idea was, we were going to wrap it up. We were going to write towards a finale and have an ending, so a lot of the characters left the office. We went forward by a year, we found out where everybody was. There was something that felt like we actually wrapped up the storylines, we didn’t leave it hanging. I felt like we’re probably not going to get every single character back, they’re all doing all this cool things,” he continued.
Would viewers accept and iteration of The Office without Jim and Pam for insentience? John Krasinski has floated the idea of a one-off reunion special in the past.
“I don’t think people’s expectations of getting back in the saddle and doing more episodes of the same show was going to be realistic. But, I don’t know. People seem so into the show still. At some point, maybe, it’s unfair to be a priss and not give them what they want. I don’t know,” Daniels said.
(E! and Peacock are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)
