EXCLUSIVE: As Greg Daniels continues to work with a group of writers on what could become an expansion of The Office universe, Nathan For You co-creator Michael Koman has emerged as a leading creative voice. If Daniels’ new mockumentary exploratory project gets greenlighted to series, Koman will serve as the offshoot’s co-creator, Deadline has learned.
The potential Office follow-up, from Universal Television, remains in development.
As Deadline revealed exclusively in January, the prospective new series, which is not a reboot, would likely be set in a new office with new characters but live within the same world as the Steve Carell-led mockumentary series which follows employees at the Scranton, Pennsylvania, branch of the fictional Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. Daniels has indicated that a new Office iteration could follow a crew doing a documentary about a different subject.
Koman has the perfect background for that — Nathan For You, which he co-created with star Nathan Fielder, was a docu-reality comedy series, in which Fielder used his business background to try and help struggling companies. The series ran on Comedy Central for four seasons.
Additionally, Koman and Daniels share similar career start, having both come out of Saturday Night Live‘s writing ranks. There is a personal connection too. Since 2012, Korman has been married to Ellie Kemper, who joined the ensemble cast of Daniels’ The Office during the show’s fifth season.
Koman’s writing credits also include The Colbert Report, MadTV and Late Night With Conan O’Brien, for which he shared an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing For A Variety, Music or Comedy Program in 2007. He recently served as writer/co-executive producer on Girls5Eva.
Daniels adapted NBC‘s The Office for American audiences based on the hit BBC series of the same name from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. The series premiered in 2005 with an ensemble cast that includes Carell, John Krasinski, Rainn Wilson, B.J. Novak, Jenna Fischer, Mindy Kaling, Leslie David Baker, Melora Hardin, Kate Flannery, Brian Baumgartner, Ed Helms, Oscar Nuñez and Craig Robinson. The show ran for 9 seasons before concluding in 2013, with James Spader taking over as lead following Carell’s departure in Season 7.
While individual original cast members could presumably pop up in a new franchise series, a full-blown reunion appears to be out of the question, sources close to production reveal.
Koman is repped by UTA and Nelson Davis.
