‘The Office’ Will Feature ‘More Complete’ Episodes When It Moves to Peacock in 2021
It has been more than seven years since NBC aired the series finale of The Office. During that time the beloved sitcom has become even more popular than it was during its original broadcast run. At this point, many fans have binged the series several times, and they might think they know everything there is to know about the American version of Ricky Gervais’ limited UK series. It turns out, they are very wrong.
‘The Office’ is moving from Netflix to Peacock in 2021
After nine seasons on NBC, The Office has enjoyed a lengthy run on Netflix as one of the streaming platform’s most popular series. However, that is coming to an end soon. NBCUniversal has acquired the rights to The Office and will bring the series to their new streaming platform, Peacock, in January 2021.
Not only will fans still have instant access to all of Jim’s (John Krasinski) pranks and Michael Scott’s (Steve Carrell) most cringeworthy moments at Dunder Mifflin, but the chairman of Peacock says there will also be previously unseen footage.
“We will be reintroducing The Office in a more complete way, incorporating elements that were not part of the original broadcast,” Matt Strauss, chairman of Peacock, told Bloomberg.
Just like WarnerMedia plans to do with the cast of Friends on HBOMax, Peacock is planning an exclusive reunion episode for the cast of The Office to coincide with the show’s move to the platform. But, that is just the beginning of the bonus content that Peacock supposedly has planned.
A cast of comedy improv experts equals hours of deleted scenes
Fans who have purchased any of The Office DVD box sets know that the 22 minutes of footage edited into each episode was just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what the cameras actually captured.
The box sets feature commentary from the cast and crew, audition footage, and blooper reels. But, the real treasure in each set are the hours and hours of cut footage shot for each episode that didn’t make the cut.
With comedy all-stars like Carrell, Krasinski, Rainn Wilson (Dwight K. Schrute), B.J. Novak (Ryan Howard), Mindy Kaling (Kelly Kapoor), Ed Helms (Andy Bernard), Jenna Fischer (Pam Beesley), and Kate Flannery (Meredith Palmer) in the cast, there are hours of deleted scenes and alternative takes with hilarious improv.
The “more complete” aspect that Strauss seems to be hinting at means they will include this bonus content.
Netflix actually went the other way and sometimes cut scenes from The Office on their platform. The most glaring editing crime is the episode Threat Level Midnight, as Netflix did not include the must-see extended version.
There will not be a reboot of ‘The Office’
Matt Strauss didn’t go into detail about his plans for The Office when it hits Peacock. But deleted scenes will likely be included as well as some behind-the-scenes content.
However, the one thing that is off the table is a reboot.
When NBCUniversal announced Peacock in September 2019, the Chairman of Direct-to-Consumer and Digital Enterprises at NBCUniversal, Bonnie Hammer, said that her “hope and goal” was that they do a reboot of The Office.
However, last month, NBCU’s content boss Bill McGoldrick said there is not a reboot in development.
“Because it does not launch until January, we have not talked specifically about The Office reboots for Peacock. We’ve talked about things we can do to support The Office once it gets to our service but a reboot has not come up specifically for Peacock,” McGoldrick said.
Greg Daniels’ adapted the workplace comedy for American audiences. He Claims that he hasn’t talked to anyone at Peacock about a possible reboot.
“I don’t think that we would either be able to get all the cast together, because a lot of them are doing different things, or whether we’d really need to do that, because I feel like we had our finale,” said Daniels.
Fans can stream The Office on Netflix until it’s move in 2021.
