It’s official: Friends will be there for you one last time. The beloved NBC sitcom is coming back for an unscripted reunion special on the upcoming streamer HBO Max with all six cast members on board. The news was announced today by Warner Media, who stated that the reunion will be available when the service launches in May, along with all 236 episodes of the original series.
Rumors of a Friends reunion first started to circulate in early February after series star Matthew Perry teased that “big news” was coming. And people could not be more excited.
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“Guess you could call this the one where they all got back together,” HBO Max Chief Content Officer Kevin Reilly said. “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.”
Along with Perry and co-stars Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow and David Schwimmer, the show’s original creative team will also be returning. Kevin Bright, Marta Kauffman and David Crane will resume their roles of executive producers. Ben Winston, who will also direct, is also listed as an EP.
For those fans who are still mourning the fact that the show can no longer be binged on Netflix, TBS has also announced that every episode of Friends will air weekdays from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Additionally, the TBS official app has curated a special fan experience that offers up the best of the series on its platform.
Despite having gone off the air in 2004, the show remains enormously popular. So much so that Netflix shelled out $100 million to keep it on its platform through 2019. It’s not the only NBC sitcom on the chopping block, either. The Cheers spinoff Frasier just recently left the platform, while The Office is expected to punch out sometime in the near future.
Friends first premiered on NBC back in 1994, chronicling the lives of six 20-something New Yorkers as they navigated through their personal and professional lives (with a little help from rent control). It aired for 10 seasons, only to find its way to Netflix in 2015, where it quickly became one of the most-binge-watched programs in their roster.
