Summary

• Greg Daniels, creator of The Office, is not interested in rebooting the sitcom with new characters, as he believes the original story had closure and the best cast ever.
• Instead, Daniels envisions a new show in the same universe as The Office, similar to how The Mandalorian exists in the Star Wars universe.
• He suggests the idea of a documentary crew filming a documentary about a different subject, which he finds intriguing and creative, but he's unsure what to call it other than a "sister show."

The Office creator Greg Daniels says he's not interested in rebooting the seminal sitcom, explaining how he plans to approach the reported reboot show in new remarks. Back in September, just as the writers strike was coming to a close, it was reported that a reboot of The Office was in the works, with Daniels attached to the project. There haven't been any additional details in of casting or plot, though Daniels has confirmed his involvement.

In new comments to The Wrap while promoting his Prime Video sci-fi comedy , Daniels addressed his approach to a new version of The Office and clarified that he isn't interested in simply rebooting the series with new characters. Instead, in the quote below, Daniels talks about how he wants to do something that exists in the same universe as The Office — comparing it to how The Mandalorian exists in the same overall universe as Star Wars. The full quote is below:

I don’t like to think of anything as a reboot, you know what I mean? Because I feel like we ended that story beautifully. 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? Something like the notion of this documentary crew doing a documentary about a different subject.

That, I think, could be intriguing and creative. But I don’t even know what you would call that. I don’t know if that’s like a sister show or something. I don’t know what the term is. But it doesn’t feel like ‘reboot’ would be the appropriate term for that.

Can The Office Avoid The Fate of Most Reboots?

The trend of television reboots has been an overall mixed bag, with few highs. iCarly, How I Met Your Father, Gossip Girl, and Saved by the Bell are all reboots of once popular shows that have recently been canceled. Even in cases where a reboot is popular enough to run for a number of seasons, like the CW's 90210 reboot, it nonetheless fails to come close to capturing the zeitgeist in the way that the original did.

If The Office reboot follows in the footsteps of the original too faithfully, bringing back original cast or focusing on relatives of the established characters, the revival would be setting itself up to fail. The NBC comedy, which was itself a reworked take on a British comedy of the same name, has arguably only grown in popularity since its original airing. There would be inevitable comparisons that the revival might struggle to live up to.

Having the reboot exist in the same overall universe allows for potential guest appearances from original characters once The Office's new ensemble is established enough in their own right. The comparisons will be inevitable, but at least in the shared universe approach, the new version of the comedy would have a better chance of being evaluated on its own .

Source: The Wrap