‘Friends’ Reunion Special in Early Planning Stages at HBO Max
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More “Friends” could well be there for you when the HBO Max rain starts to fall.
An unscripted “Friends” reunion special is in the works at the forthcoming WarnerMedia streamer, Variety has confirmed with sources.
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Sources say original cast members Jennifer Aniston, Lisa Kudrow, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer are in discussions to appear in the special, alongside David Crane and Marta Kauffman, who co-created the show. No official plans are currently in place nor are there details on what the special would look like. Most likely it would feature the cast and creators sharing stories and memories from the set of the beloved sitcom.
HBO Max and Warner Bros. Television, which produced the series, declined to comment.
The news comes four months after HBO Max snatched the coveted streaming rights to the NBC series from Netflix in a deal with WBTV. All 236 episodes of the show will roll off Netflix and onto HBO Max upon the streamer’s launch in May 2020.
Kauffman had categorically ruled out a reunion as little as two months ago, saying at a Tribeca TV Festival panel marking the 25th anniversary of “Friends” that “we will not be doing a reunion show. We will not be doing a reboot.”
“There are two reasons for that. One of the reasons we won’t do a reunion is because this is a show about a time in your life when your friends are your family. And when you have a family, that changes. But the other reason is it’s not going to beat what we did,” Kauffman said.
This latest news would appear to suggest she might be in the process of changing her mind.
With reboots and revivals of seemingly every other show on television being announced at different platforms, Jennifer Aniston also recently weighed in on why exactly a “Friends” reunion hadn’t materialized in the form of a movie.
“Because our producers wouldn’t want it, wouldn’t let us,” Aniston told Variety. “Look, it’s not been without our desire to, because our fans have wanted it so much.”
Aniston nearly broke the internet when she posted a photo of the “Friends” gang back together again on her Instagram, before going on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” and hinting that “something “Friends”-related could be coming our way.
“I would love for there to be something, but we don’t know what that something is,” she said to DeGeneres. “So we’re just trying. We’re working on something.”
The Hollywood Reporter first reported on the potential special.
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