It's official – Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow, and David Schwimmer will all be returning for an untitled, unscripted Friends reunion special which will air on HBO Max, WarnerMedia's upcoming streaming service.
All ten seasons of the sitcom will be available on HBO Max, and WarnerMedia certainly paid a pretty penny for them. Speaking of cold, hard cash, sources has said that Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow, and David Schwimmer will each be paid at least $2.5 million for appearing in the Friends special. "Guess you could call this the one where they all got back together — we are reuniting with David, Jennifer, Courteney, Matt, Lisa, and Matthew for an HBO Max special that will be programmed alongside the entire ‘Friends’ library," said Kevin Reilly, chief content officer at HBO Max and president of TBS, TNT, and truTV, in a statement. "I became aware of ‘Friends’ when it was in the very early stages of development and then had the opportunity to work on the series many years later and have delighted in seeing it catch on with viewers generation after generation. It taps into an era when friends – and audiences – gathered together in real time and we think this reunion special will capture that spirit, uniting original and new fans."
We've seen many classic TV shows get the revival treatment over the past few years, but the cast and crew of Friends have largely remained united in not wanting that to happen; in fact, during last year's 25th Anniversary Panel in New York, series co-creator Marta Kauffman said, "We will not being doing a reunion show. We will not be doing a reboot. The reason is this is a show about that time in your life where your friends are your family. Once you start having a family, that changes. So it wouldn’t be what’s at the heart of the show anymore. The other reason is, it’s not going to beat what we did." While the reunion special may not be the revival which some fans were hoping it would be, I'm sure that it will give HBO Max a welcome boost when the streaming service launches in May.
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