Friends fans have finally gotten their way. For years the cast and creators have heard cries for a reunion—and over and over again, they’ve said it’s a moo point. But it appears that for once, a constant barrage of begging has worked—because according to a new report, HBO Max and Warner Bros. Television are in talks with the cast and original creators for a reunion special.
Before we go further we must caution: According to the Hollywood Reporter, negotiations are still in the early stages, so the special is far from a done deal. That said, all six original stars—Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matthew Perry, and Matt LeBlanc—as well as creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane, are at the table. Should a deal materialize, the next step would be to find a way to work around everyone’s schedules, THR notes.
Sources tell THR that Bob Greenblatt, former NBC Entertainment chairman and now WarnerMedia Entertainment and direct-to-consumer chairman, is the one leading the charge to bring a reunion to HBO Max as a complement to the upcoming streaming platform’s debut and Friends’ move to the service from Netflix.
Yes, both the Friends cast and creators have spent years shooting down the idea of a reunion, but we did have some indication that something was coming. In October, Aniston made her first-ever post on Instagram a reunion photo of the cast—and later that month she told Ellen DeGeneres that the cast was “working on something.” Representatives for Warner Bros. Television and HBO Max declined to comment when reached by THR, and did not immediately respond to V.F.’s requests for comment.
It’s hard to overstate how resistant the Friends cast and creators have been in the past to the idea of a reunion. Kauffman in particular has repeatedly emphasized that Friends as a concept had a certain finite lifespan. As she put it in 2016, “Friends was a show about that time in your life when your friends are your family, and in a weird way, this isn’t that different. Once you start having family of your own, it changes, and the show was over. A show has a lifespan, I believe.” Most of the cast did stage a reunion of sorts that year as NBC honored James Burrows—joining the casts of other shows the lauded director had helmed over the years to share stories in a panel—but that didn’t stop the clamoring, especially since Perry was absent from the gathering. Maybe this special, should it materialize, will be enough to satisfy the hunger once and for all. Or, given that we live in the I.P. era, it will be just the beginning.
