This May, on the sixteenth anniversary of the American sitcom’s heartfelt finale, the cast of Friends will reunite once again for a one-off special.
That’s right, after months of rumours and heavy speculation, Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc and Matthew Perry will officially reunite onscreen in 2020 for an unscripted Friends reunion exclusive to HBO‘s upcoming streaming service, HBO Max, according to Variety.
On Friday, Feb. 21 at 2 p.m. (PT), each of the stars — with the exception of LeBlanc, 52 — took to Instagram sharing an identical promotional image from the smash-hit ’90s comedy series which showed the six beloved characters together, confirming they had all signed a deal with the media giant.
The images were all captioned, “It’s happening…,” including LeBlanc’s, who instead, posted an image of some of the cast members from M.A.S.H. as a joke.
As well as leading actors, the WarnerMedia (HBO, Warner Bros.) special will welcome back series creators David Crane and Marta Kauffman as executive producers, as well as Ben Winston (Carpool Karaoke) as the director.
Though the reunion is currently untitled, Kevin Reilly, CCO of HBO Max, tentatively named it “The One Where They All Got Back Together.”
On Friday, he confirmed to Variety that along with the upcoming special, HBO Max — which also launches in May — will have all 10 seasons and 236 episodes of Friends available for subscribers to stream at their will. Reilly said:
“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.”
On his history with the show, the businessman added, “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.”
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Reilly continued, “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.”
In the wake of the news, tens of thousands of Friends fanatics took to social media to share their excitement.
“I’m so ready for #FriendsReunion,” tweeted one fan of the show.”
Here’s what some other Twitter users had to say:
https://twitter.com/ankitt_goel/status/1231112902943420416
Some other fans shared their concerns about the special being marked as “unscripted.”
Another user wrote: “If the Friends reunion is the actors sitting around discussing the show and not an actual episode… I’m going to have a conniption!”
Aniston, Cox, Kudrow, Schwimmer, LeBlanc and Perry will receive at least US$2.5 million each for participating in the HBO Max exclusive, as reported by Variety.
As of this writing, no exact release date has been set for the Friends reunion, however, it will launch this May, along with the entirety of the Friends episodes catalogue.
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