It's been nearly eight years since Steve Carell made weekly visits to our lives as The Office's blundering Michael Scott, and it'll soon be five years since the series itself said goodbye. Fans probably shouldn't expect any long-form Office revivals in the future, sad as it may be, but Carell IS reuniting with the U.S. series' creator Greg Daniels for a new Netflix comedy called Space Force. Yes, that Space Force.
With what seems like a speedy-ish development period, not to mention a bizarre one, Space Force was granted a straight-to-series order from Netflix. The high-concept project gets its name and its general concept comes from President Donald Trump's claims last summer that he was ordering a sixth branch of the military of the same name to protect America's interests from far above the planet. Don't expect anything on the level of Star Wars or Lost in Space, though.
Created by both Greg Daniels and Steve Carell, Space Force will be more of a workplace comedy, as opposed to something more explosive and war-bound. The characters involved will be the group whose job it is to lift the Space Force initiative off the ground, as it were. No episode count has been announced just yet.
Perhaps it'll be in line with Paul Feig's fantastically quirky Other Space, or, given the political inspiration, maybe an arching satire in the vein of Dr. Strangelove. I'd love to see Daniels and Carell go there together. You can check out a brief, text-filled teaser for Space Force below, which goes a little Stanley Kubrick with its musical bombast.
Though Space Force doesn't sound like it'll be a cosmos-exploring sci-fi epic, that doesn't mean it won't rack up a healthy budget. According to THR, Steve Carell will be earning a hefty paycheck for the new comedy. It's reported that he'll make somewhere over $1 million per episode, which would put him atop The Big Bang Theory's core cast, as well as everyone else in scripted television. It'll be very interesting to see the caliber of co-stars that get signed up next.
Netflix had more than enough reasons to secure Greg Daniels and Steve Carell to its Originals stable. The Office remains one of the most popular shows on the streaming service, and binge-watching has only made the comedy more widely known. Once word got out that Carell was interested in returning to TV as a series lead, Netflix apparently wanted to make sales first and friends second, in no particular order.
Steve Carell is returning to TV soon for a somewhat smaller role in Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon's upcoming dramedy for Apple, which received a two-season order from the outset. For that project, he signed a one-year deal, and is said to be dubbed a "special guest star" for his work in the first season.
Meanwhile, Greg Daniels is also busy working on another scripted TV show. He's the creator and showrunner for Amazon's satirical sci-fi romance Upload, with former Arrow-verse star Robbie Amell.
Is everybody pumped to see Steve Carell reteaming with the creator who turned Michael Scott into a household name? I hope they've got some shelf space polished for the Dundies, er, Emmys that could potentially be on the way. Stay tuned for more info about Space Force, and keep current with all the big Netflix premieres and midseason premieres in the meantime.
