Deadline reported that the cast of Friends started conversations several months ago for an unscripted reunion special on the upcoming streaming platform HBO Max. The negotiations are said to have recently come to a pause over money disagreements with the cast and producing studio Warner Bros. TV.
“There is interest all around and yet we can’t get the interests all alighted to push the button on it,” HBO Max’s Chief Creative Officer Kevin Reilly said about the reunion special at TCA. “Today it’s just maybe.”
Aniston, who was responsible for the release of the recent reunion of the cast for a photo on her Instagram account in early November which left many to speculate and Aniston even further alluded to the project during an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
She confirmed what Friends creators has been saying all along, that there is not going to be a Friends reboot, but she did suggest that some kind of reunion was underway.
Aniston said in statement, “I would love for there to be something, but we don’t know what that something is. So, we’re just trying. We’re working on something.”
Co-creators/executive producers Marta Kauffman and David Crane were each expected to have some involvement in the special, which was designed to help launch Friends reruns on HBO Max. The streaming service spent nearly $425 million for rights to Friends, which has recently been named as one of Netflix’s biggest hits.
Aniston’s Instagram pic with Friends co-stars Courtney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer set a new Guinness World Records for the fastest time to reach one million followers, further proving just how how appeal the show continues to hold.
Last September during the Friends 25th anniversary panel at Tribeca TV Festival, Kauffman and Crane squashed all hopes of any reboot or scripted reunion that would revisit the characters and stories from the series.
“We will not be doing a reunion show, we will not be doing a reboot,” Kauffman said. “The show was about that time in life when friends are your family,” she explained, adding that life changes when your family becomes your family.
With regards to a reboot, Kauffman said, “It’s not going to beat what we did.” Crane also added, “We did the show we wanted to do. We got it right, and we put a bow on it.”