Friends, the iconic NBC TV show from the ’90s and early 2000s, is reportedly coming back for a one-off reunion special. NBC executive Kevin Reilly has now provided a status update on the project, and it’s not the best of news for Friends fans.
Speaking at a Television Critics Association event this week, Reilly confirmed that discussions are underway with the cast and creators to bring back Friends for a special. However, nothing is locked in yet. The possibility of the reunion special continues to be a “maybe,” as the network struggles to find a way to get the project off the ground.
“There’s interest all the way around, and yet we can’t seem to quite get that interest all aligned to push the button on it,” he said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “Today, unfortunately, it’s still a maybe.”
Friends features Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer, and Matthew Perry in the career-defining roles of six friends from New York.
The original Friends was produced by Warner Bros. TV and aired on NBC. The new reunion show, if it happens, would be made for the Warner-supported HBO Max. That platform launches later in 2020, and it plans to charge $15 USD/month for access to a catalog of old shows and movies, as well as new, original content.
Friends left Netflix at the end of 2019, and it will move to HBO Max when it launches. WarnerMedia reportedly paid $85 million per year to get Friends for a period of five years.
Series creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane have said for a long time that they don’t want to reboot Friends, but this new program seems to be a one-off special. In October 2019, Aniston told Ellen Degeneres that something new for Friends was in the works. “We’re working on something,” Aniston said.
As of 2015, the show was bringing in $1 billion every year from syndication, with all the main stars making $20 million a year from that based on their 2 percent share of syndication revenue, according to USA Today.
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