Justin Lubin/NBCUpdated: Brian Stelter of the New York Times' TV Decoder is liveblogging his booty off over at the NBC presentation in NYC, and he reports these details about the Office spinoff:
- It will premiere immediately following the Super Bowl in January '09.
- Greg Daniels is "behind" the idea, even though he and his writing team will clearly be kind of busy doing the 28 half-hours of the original series that NBC has requested for the '08-'09 season.
- Per Ben Silverman, it is "very likely" you will see some Dunder-Mifflin-ites cross over to the new series.
It seems that NBC prez Ben Silverman is still invested in the series that put him on the map: The Peacock net has ordered an Office spinoff, set to premiere this winter in the 9:30 slot after the original series.
Mmm...no wonder they didn't have room for Scrubs (which, by the way, is entirely MIA from NBC's new schedules for 2008-09). According to the Hollywood Reporter, the series would launch as an episode of the original U.S. Office, and then go out on its own.
We're working on answering these burning questions:
- Would it be a Dunder-Mifflin branch elsewhere in the Rust Belt, or maybe a whole new industry in a whole new place?
- Who will be our new Pam and Jim?
- Any chance this is too much of a good thing, like those hourlong installments of The Office earlier this year? Or is this another great element of Comedy Night Done Right?