Cinema Science

The Office shuts down, from TV Week.

“The Office” showrunner Greg Daniels has joined the picket line at his production company’s Van Nuys location in an attempt to shut down production of his show.

“We’re trying to shut down ‘The Office,’” Mr. Daniels said. “We have the star of our show and the entire writing staff behind us.”

Mr. Daniels says he arrived at 4:15 this morning and none of the show's actors have crossed the line. “The Office” cast includes several performers who are also writers on the show, like B.J. Novak, Mindy Kaling and Paul Lieberstein. “Office” star Steve Carell is a WGA member and is not showing up for work as well, he said.

Mr. Daniels is one of many writer-producers facing the decision this morning whether to continue acting as producers on their shows. Sources say a group of top showrunners met this weekend and largely decided to not cross the picket lines. Studios maintain showrunners should continue working to fulfill their production duties.

“We have non-writing producers on the show who are perfectly capable of doing any non-writing producing duties,” Mr. Daniels said. “They want me do to writing-producing and just pretend it’s producing. Every decision you make has a writing aspect to it. If they really just thought it was producing, they could just as easily get somebody else to do these tasks.”

Mr. Daniels said there’s only one unproduced “Office” script that’s ready to go, but it’s a good one.

“Last week we had our best table reading of the entire run of the show, and that’s what we were going to shoot this week,” he said.