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Rainn Wilson Says NBC Missed Out On Huge Money With The Office Spinoff (And He’s Absolutely Right)
The Office has become one of the true modern TV classics, so it’s unreal at times to think that the show was almost cancelled after season 1. Thankfully, that didn’t end up being the case, and The Office would go on to experience another wave of popularity when it debuted on Netflix. The show now calls Peacock home and remains popular, but Office star Rainn Wilson (who played the iconic role of Dwight Schrute) says that NBC lost out on huge money with a spinoff series, and he’s absolutely right.
During an interview on The Last Laugh podcast (via Variety), Wilson gave some insight into why NBC decided not to pursue a spinoff series, which was actually featured in a backdoor pilot in season 9 of The Office. That spinoff was going to be titled The Farm, and Wilson feels that looking back, NBC would have probably had another “billion dollars in the bank” if they had actually run with the show.
A Flashy Change in Direction
“NBC at that time had a new regime that came in and they wanted to do big, bright, flashy, splashy shows that were multi-cams and going back to ‘Friends’ kind of thing,” Wilson said. “And they were just not interested at all in ‘Office’ spinoffs at the time. Had they taken ‘The Farm,’ they’d probably have another billion dollars in the bank.”
“Even now, all the people that have seen ‘The Office’ 20 times, they’re going to watch ‘The Farm’ at least once or twice. Would it have been as good as ‘The Office’? No. No way. Not even close. Would it have been good? Would it have been solid? Would it have been a good solid comedy? Yeah, it would have, and we would’ve done some really cool stuff. And I think they really missed out,” Wilson said.
A Misguided Decision
Fans have seen some rough spin-offs from beloved shows, including the aforementioned Friends, which notably launched the spinoff series Joey to mixed reviews. While the show wasn’t the same after Steve Carell left, it’s hard to see the show’s other most popular actor and character not drawing views for the spinoff series, especially if they leaned into the absurdity that someone like Dwight naturally creates.
When the series hit Netflix, it was almost like NBC was taken by surprise at the renewed popularity, and they really couldn’t benefit from it in any meaningful way until they retained the rights for their own service down the line. If The Farm had been around, perhaps NBC would have been able to utilize that renewed interest in some way, but Wilson goes on to say that this was always sort of part of the problem anyway.
Wilson said, “But the the history of ‘The Office’ in NBC is, they never really got the show. Honestly, it was like five years after the show was over, when all of a sudden it started being watched in the billions of minutes on Netflix, that NBC was like, wait a minute, this is kind of a cash cow. This is actually a really good show and it’s got some legs.”
Now NBC has embraced The Office once more with the spinoff series The Paper, and the show has already been renewed for a second season on Peacock. There’s also some crossover of characters in the show, but we’ll have to wait and see if anyone else from the original series shows up in season 2. For now, The Farm will be a what-if scenario, but at least it seems NBC has realized it still wants to be in the paper business.
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