Reboots, sequels, and revivals are announced practically every day. Ideas are scarce in Hollywood. In September, for example, we had reported that The Office, as rumored in the industry, would have a reboot. With Greg Daniels on board, who knew how to adapt the British comedy by Ricky Gervais with the same name but giving it his own personality, he had to follow the project closely. But, now that new details of the project are known, it directly deserves the attention of fans of the Dunder Mifflin offices.
Daniels, with the help of Michael Koman (How to with John Wilson) as co-creator, has found an unexpected creative angle. The still unnamed series will focus on the team of documentary filmmakers who recorded Michael Scott and the rest of the characters in The Office, whose lives are absolutely gray. After immortalizing them, as indicated by TVLine, they are looking for new subjects to portray. They focus on the workers of a decadent newspaper in inner America.
With this starting point, this spin-off, reboot or simply series “set in the same universe” of The Office aims to turn the tables: not only reuse the condition of (false) documentary of the original series to integrate the documentarians within the plots and jokes, in a direct way.
The two leading actors have already been hired: the Irish Domhnall Gleeson, known for his work in Ex Machina, Harry Potter, A Matter of Time or the series The Patient, and the Italian Sabrina Impacciatore, who was nominated for an Emmy as director of the Sicilian hotel. by The white lotus. In July they begin filming the first season.
The Office is one of those properties that studios look at with nostalgia, just like Friends or The Big Bang Theory. It is a title that gave great results in its original broadcast on television and that has never completely died. Its memes are always recovered, it is part of the cultural imagination and in streaming it does not stop being seen over and over again, even being recovered by new generations.
It is normal that Universal, since the American version said goodbye in 2013, has thought and looked for a way to recover the series. However, the last stage of The Office, where Steve Carell did not lead the cast, was a good warning: it was not a comedy that worked by default and the public was not going to buy any derivative project that was offered.
With a decade in between and a totally new starting point, without the participation of veterans from the original cast being expected, we will have to see if The Office lovers are interested. The project has been commissioned by Peacock, the Universal platform that does not operate as such in Spain, although Universal does have a joint venture in streaming with Paramount, SkyShowtime.