The long-awaited Friends reunion is asking us to wait a little longer. Bob Greenblatt told Variety that due to the coronavirus pandemic, filming of the special has been pushed to sometime later this summer.
“At first we thought, shows will be delayed for a month or two at the most, and now it seems like it’s going to be far longer than that,” he told Variety on Monday. “We’re holding out for being able to get this special done hopefully by the end of the summer, if the stars align and hopefully we can get back into production. We do think there’s a value to having a big, raucous live audience to experience these six great friends coming back together and we didn’t want to just suddenly do it on a web call with, you know, six squares and people shooting from their kitchens and bedrooms.”
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
Original story published below on February 21.
In the words of Lisa Kudrow’s Phoebe Buffay: “Oh my God, that is brand-new information!” After months of teasing a Friends reunion special, HBO Max gave us the official word on when we would see the stars of the beloved NBC sitcom on the same couch: The Friends reunion is happening in May of 2020, the very same day that HBO Max launches.
The reunion special will feature cast members Kudrow, Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Matthew Perry, Courteney Cox, and Matt LeBlanc, and will take them back to the place they spent a full decade filming Friends: Stage 24 at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, CA.
“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,” said Kevin Reilly, chief content officer, HBO Max and president, TBS, TNT, and truTV, in a statement. “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.”
The new program will be available along with all 236 episodes of Friends. For those still mourning the loss of Friends on Netflix (and who haven’t stocked up on the DVDs, as many fans did once the show was removed from its longtime streaming home) you only have a few months to wait before you can binge all the Ross and Rachel drama at your leisure.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
The Friends cast got fans hyped for the reunion by posting the same message on their respective Instagram accounts, teasing the big news.
Twitter is excited, to say the least.
Could we *BE* anymore excited? #friendsreunion pic.twitter.com/msD2QYkski
— Joey Tribbiani (@joeyFtribbiani) February 21, 2020
Everything gonna be okey again#FriendsReunion pic.twitter.com/wwUb3h9y9h
— no context friends (@noctextfriends) February 21, 2020
I am literally crying #FriendsReunion pic.twitter.com/I8oALqbXDY
— sᴜᴘᴇʀ ᴛᴠ (@superTV247) February 21, 2020
Scrolling through Seeing “it’s
— Kirsty (@kkirstylouise) February 21, 2020
Instagram Happening”#FriendsReunion pic.twitter.com/aK94PImpXk
friends fans now that there's a reunion AFTER 16 YEARS #FriendsReunion
— ƒ ༄ // ia for a while (@peacefuIsel) February 21, 2020
pic.twitter.com/HPq1aApIoA
When the Friends cast all post “It’s happening...” at the same time #friendsreunion pic.twitter.com/czSWyScsFA
— Jack Birch (@Jackoby_) February 21, 2020
As for a full-on reboot of Friends, the cast has sent plenty of mixed signals over the years.
“I would do it...The girls would do it, and the boys would do it, I'm sure," Aniston told Ellen DeGeneres in 2019. "Listen, anything can happen."
Kudrow, however, admitted on The Today Show in 2017 she doesn’t think the idea could work.
"The thing we liked best about the show was that they were 20-somethings and they were their own family," she told host Savannah Guthrie. "Now, they all have families, so what are we going to watch?"
Well, at least we have this reunion special to check out, even if we’ll never see what shenanigans baby Emma is getting up to during her teenage years.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT