Rainn Wilson said a scrapped spinoff built around his The Office character Dwight Schrute would have made “another billion dollars,” comments that surfaced as a new series in the same universe, The Paper, premiered this month.
Wilson, 59, discussed the project on The Last Laugh podcast and attributed the cancellation of The Farm to a change in leadership at NBC in 2013 that he said favored “big, bright, flashy, splashy shows” and multicam formats over spinoffs. “Had they taken The Farm, they'd probably have another billion dollars in the bank,” he said.
An episode of The Office titled “The Farm” aired in 2013 and was intended as a backdoor pilot for the series centered on Dwight’s family beet farm. The installment received largely negative reviews at the time and was described by some critics as a “Frankenstein episode.” Wilson acknowledged the spinoff likely would not have equaled the original show but said it would have been “a good solid comedy.” “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,” he said.
Wilson also suggested NBC did not fully appreciate The Office while it was on the air, and only recognized its long-term value after the series found a larger audience on streaming platforms. “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,” he said.
The remarks come as The Paper, a new mockumentary set in the same universe as The Office, debuted on Sept. 4. The Paper follows the staff of a newspaper rather than a paper-selling company and features Domhnall Gleeson and Sabrina Impacciatore in lead roles. Oscar Nunez, an actor familiar to Office fans, appears in the new series in a recast role, and the network has said the same documentary crew that filmed the Dunder Mifflin Scranton branch will be used.
Reaction from some viewers was immediate and mixed on social media, with several users saying a new spinoff was unnecessary. “This is a horrible idea,” one user wrote, while another posted, “We gotta let things end and showcase new ideas.” Other responses ranged from outright rejection to bemused curiosity about whether any spinoff could match the original.
The U.S. version of The Office, adapted from the U.K. series created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, ran from 2005 to 2013 and became a cultural touchstone during and after its broadcast run. Its resurgence on streaming platforms helped fuel renewed interest in the franchise and in anthology or spinoff projects that revisit the mockumentary format.
Wilson’s comments revive a longstanding discussion about how networks assess spinoff potential and the role of streaming metrics in reshaping the economics of television properties. Producers and networks have long weighed the risks of extending a popular series against the potential to monetize established audiences, and the Office franchise has become a clear example of how a show’s value can grow substantially after its initial run.
The Paper’s launch adds another entry to the Office universe more than a decade after the original U.S. series ended, and Wilson’s suggestion that The Farm could have been a major commercial success underlines the continued debate about how best to leverage legacy shows for contemporary audiences.