NBC’s ‘The Office’: Rainn Wilson confirms that spinoff ‘The Farm’ is dead

When “The Office” ends after nine seasons in May, we can now confirm officially that its much-discussed spinoff series “The Farm” will be coming on as a replacement. In a move that secures that the last we will likely see of any of these characters is in the series finale, multiple sources are saying that NBC executives have decided to pull the plug on this show before it even aired the launching-pad episode of “The Office” that was all about Dwight Shrute’s possible future venture with his family.

In a post on Twitter, it was Rainn Wilson who first announced the news about the show’s failure to get off the ground courtesy of the following message:

“NBC has passed on moving forward with The Farm TV show. Had a blast making the pilot – onwards & upwards!”

So what was the reason behind this move? It’s likely a pair of variables that ended up coming together at the end of the day. First, NBC obviously did not feel that the pilot was good enough to justify a from-scratch promotional push, and the sagging ratings for the flagship series have not been the sort of thing to really inspire much confidence for the executives that there is great upside here for a character that everyone already knows.

This may not be the last we see of some of these “Office” actors, though, as the likes of Angela Kinsey (Angela), Craig Robinson (Darryl), and Brian Baumgartner (Kevin) have all scored pilot deals for the upcoming season. These shows will still have to go through some sort of test behind the scenes like “The Farm” has, but they do have the luxury of possibly getting more devoted viewers than just folks who have watched the original show. (“The Mindy Project” is a good example of an alum finding their footage elsewhere rather quickly.)

Are you surprised that NBC made this decision without the spinoff even airing its pilot?