Fans SCREECHING – ‘The Office’ Spinoff Confirmed?!

The Office—the American version of the original British sitcom—is getting a new lease on life with a forthcoming spin-off. Set in Scranton, Pennsylvania at the fictional firm of Dunder and Mifflin, the show gained a vast and loyal fan base with its intentionally awkward skewering of passive-aggressive white collar office politics.

According to Deadline news, producer Greg Daniels, the original mind behind the importation and adaptation of The Office from the UK original, is set to be the show-runner. He is, according to the report, currently devoting the show with a group of writers on a new show set in the universe opened up by original series.

Michael Koman, the co-creator of the mockumentary sitcom “Nathan for You,” has emerged as an important creative force in the new writer’s room, so much so that he will be given a co-creator credit on the new The Office spin-off, should it be green-lit.

The Deadline report insists that this new project is not a reboot, as had previously been reported, but is instead an expansion on the already-established series lore. Instead of following the iconic characters played Steve Carell and John Krasinski (Michael Scott and Steve Halpert, respectively), the new show will instead feature a new cast of characters working in a different office.

Reworking The Office over a decade since its finale risks a mismatch between the series’s signature sense of humor and the sensibilities of younger audiences, a possibility which is guaranteed to cause at least some trepidation in veteran fans of the show. In this fear they would echo comments made by Steve Carell in a 2018 Esquire magazine interview. In that same interview, he noted that the show’s run on Netflix had stirred interested in a revival or a spin-off, an insight which now seems prescient. Carell went on to say the he didn’t think such a move would be a good idea, given modern sensibilities.