UPDATED 2/7, 9:40 a.m. ET: Following reports the Friends reunion special had run into issues, Deadline reports the principal cast have reached an agreement with Warner Bros. TV. Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer, Matt LeBlanc, and Matthew Perry are expected to return. The cast will reportedly be paid somewhere between $3 million to $4 million each for the hourlong special.
In total, this means the cost of the cast involved is expected to be over $20 million. Regardless it would appear as though the special has gone from a "maybe" to something more concrete, especially as cast members have been teasing an announcement on social media.
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The Friends reunion special rumored to be in development at HBO Max has hit a roadblock with negotiations between the cast and producing studio Warner Bros. TV stalling over money, Deadline reports.
Even though HBO Max Chief Creative Officer Kevin Reilly told reporters at the Television Critics Association that there's "interest all the way around," the chances of this event happening currently stands as a "maybe" since some issues still need to be ironed out. "There’s interest all the way around, and yet we can’t get interest all aligned to push the button on it," Reilly said. "Today, unfortunately, it's still a maybe."
Jennifer Aniston created some nostalgia sitcom chaos in October when she posted her first photo on Instagram with the entire Friends cast: Courteney Cox (Monica), Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe), Matt LeBlanc (Joey), Matthew Perry (Chandler), and David Schwimmer (Ross).
When speaking about the post that set the Guinness World Record for fastest time for an Instagram account to reach 1 million followers—5 hours and 16 minutes—Aniston let it slip on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in November that something was in the works. "I would love for there to be something, but we don’t know what that something is," she said. "So we're just trying. We're working on something."
HBO Max purchased the rights to stream Friends for five years, starting in 2020, for a reported $425 million.
