No, unfortunately it’s not “Seinfeld.” The NBC sitcom featuring Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer already got a quasi-reunion but it was on co-creator’s Larry David’s HBO show “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”
The end of season 7 revolves around getting the crew back together for a reunion episode.
But the other most popular television show of the 1990’s is about to get a huge reunion that fans have been clamoring for decades to get.
We are currently in the Golden Age of television. It began with quality shows on cable television networks like HBO, AMC and FX that really changed the game. Most people would argue that “Breaking Bad” was basically the patient zero television show that solidified the narrative about finally rivaling the film industry.
But it was HBO shows like “The Sopranos,” “Six Feet Under,” “The Wire” and “Deadwood” changed the perception first. However, even HBO doesn’t really consider themselves a cable show, after all its motto is “It’s not TV. It’s HBO.”
For a long time, television was used as a jumping-off-point to catapult a career into the film realm. Actors like George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Seth Rogen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell and Jennifer Aniston started on television and then made the leap to become legitimate movie stars.
The 1990’s had several enormous television shows that changed the industry like “Seinfeld,” “The Simpsons,” “The X-Files,” “Law and Order,” “ER” and “South Park.”
But maybe the most popular of them all featured six best “Friends” living it up at the local coffee shop, “The Central Perk.”
Fans have been begging for the original cast to get back together for a reunion for nearly two decades since the ten-year show came to an end in the early 2000’s.
And now it looks like it’s actually happening.
On the verge of celebrating the 25th anniversary of the pilot episode, the core cast of six featuring Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer, as well as series creators David Crane and Marta Kauffman, will return.
The deals are still being negotiated but the reasoning for the reunion – after years of turning down the idea of a reunion – seems to be that it will be the main feature when HBO Max premieres next year.
Lesley Goldberg of the Hollywood Reporter noted, “Sources note that WarnerMedia Entertainment and direct-to-consumer chairman Bob Greenblatt has been the driving force pushing for the Friends reunion, which would pair well with HBO Max’s debut and the comedy’s new streaming home. Sources say that the cast is willing to do it is an accomplishment in and of itself.”
News of a reunion special arrives as “Friends” has found new audiences at its streaming home on Netflix. The series is officially leaving the streamer at year’s end and will make its debut on Warner Media-backed HBO Max in 2020.
Sources say Warner Media paid $85 million per year for five years ($425 million) to reclaim streaming rights to Friends for its own platform. (Netflix, for its part, paid $80 million to $100 million to keep “Friends” on its service for 2019 and was ultimately outbid by Warner Media.)
Just a few weeks ago Aniston told Ellen DeGeneres, “We 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.”
They’re probably going to do it and Warner Media will back up the Brinks truck to do so.