Image Credit: Trae Patton/NBC
Now this is a spin-off worth cheering over: NBC is giving consideration to a new family comedy that would feature The Office character Dwight Schrute as a farmer.
Yep, you read that right. Deadline is reporting that Schrute – played by Rainn Wilson — would conceivably return home to the family beet farm and bed-and-breakfast. A backdoor pilot would air later this season and take place at the Schrute Farms. If picked up to series, the show would likely air as part of NBC’s midseason lineup in 2013.
“Paul and Rainn have been joking for years about Dwight’s life on the farm, his family and how ill-suited he is to run a B&B,” a source told Deadline. “A while ago, it started to feel like a show to them. NBC agreed, it’s been further developed to include multiple generations, many cousins and neighbors. At its base it will be about a family farm struggling to survive and a family trying to stay together.”
The pitch is not from Office creator Greg Daniels, who also oversees Parks and Recreations and the NBC comedy pilot Friday Night Dinner. Wilson himself came up with idea, as did The Office executive producer-showrunner Paul Lieberstein. Should NBC go ahead with the spin-off as well as a ninth season for The Office, Wilson is expected to return to the mothership in the fall before moving onto the new show, Deadline says.
This isn’t the first time NBC explored the possibility of an Office spin-off. Parks and Recreation was originally pitched as an Office spinoff until Daniels and SNL vet Michael Schur took it in a different direction and developed it as a mockumentary about small-town government. But even then, Daniels wouldn’t close the door on a spin-off.
“It’s possible that some combination of other Office people could produce it without my giving blood for it,” he told members of the press.
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