Fans of NBC’s beloved sitcom “The Office” got huge news at the start of 2024 when it was revealed that showrunner Greg Daniels had opened a development room to officially begin planning a reboot. Details on a new iteration of “The Office” are scarce, but Emmy winner Bryan Cranston recently floated the idea to some of the sitcom’s original cast members of doing it as a film instead of a series.
“Let’s say that there’s not a reboot series, but what if there was a movie?” Cranston asked Jenna Fischer (Pam) and Angela Kinsey (Angela) while guesting on their “Office Ladies” podcast. “Something to where we can see where these people are. These people in the entire cast that we’re curious about. We wondered at the end, where did they go? What did become of them?”
Fischer said she would sign on to a movie version of “The Office” as long as Daniels is involved “because [then] I would trust it. You know? As long as Greg is writing it and he’s in charge of it, then I say yes.”
“I would do it for my kids because I think they would think that’s fun,” Kinsey added.
Cranston has ties to “The Office” as the director of the Season 9 episode “Work Bus,” but he wouldn’t want to go on camera to star in a potential movie reboot in any official capacity.
“I just want to be an extra in it,” Cranston said. “I would be some guy. I’d be a crossing guard or something like that. Just something.”
Despite Cranston’s question, “The Office” reboot is shaping up to a television series. It’s also most likely not going to continue the story of the characters from the NBC sitcom’s original run. Daniels told The Wrap last year that he’s not interested in a “reboot” in the traditional sense and is more eager to tell a different story within the same universe. That means original “Office” characters could certainly pop up on the show, but they probably won’t be the primary focus.
“I feel like we ended that story beautifully,” Daniels said of the original series. “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.”
“The notion of maybe something like the way ‘The Mandalorian’ is a new show in the Star Wars universe, you know what I mean?” he continued. “Something like the notion of this documentary crew doing a documentary about a different subject.”
“The Office,” an American adaptation of the British TV series of the same name, ran for nine seasons and 201 episodes on NBC between 2005 and 2013. The show was headlined by Steve Carell, who has often said he will never appear in a reboot of the series.
“I’ll tell you, no,” Carell said back in 2018 when asked byColliderabout a potential “The Office” reboot. “The show is way more popular now than when it was on the air. I just can’t see it being the same thing, and I think most folks would want it to be the same thing, but it wouldn’t be. Ultimately, I think it’s maybe best to leave well enough alone and just let it exist as what it was.”
Carell continued, “You’d literally have to have all of the same writers, the same producers, the same directors and the same actors. And even with all of those components, it just wouldn’t be the same. So, no. But, I love the show. It was the most exciting time, and all of those people are my friends. We all love it. It was a special thing. It was a special thing before people thought it was a special thing. It was special to us, before other people started feeling that way. But, no.”
All episodes of “The Office” are currently available to stream on Peacock.
