‘Friends’: A Reunion Just Might Be Coming to HBO Max!!

The 25th anniversary of Friends has been big. But, to answer Chandler’s obvious follow-up: Yes. It could be any bigger. The Hollywood Reporter just spilled the beans on some buzz that’ll make any fan of the Central Perk sextet scream in delight: The cast and creators are in talks to bring you a reunion special on HBO Max.

While every cast member (as a reminder: Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer) has pretty much nixed an idea of a new reunion season of scripted episodes a la Will & Grace, they seem to be interested in reuniting for an hour-long special of sorts. Likely joining them will be series creators David Crane and Marta Kauffman, who’ve gone on to create acclaimed comedy series like Grace and Frankie and Episodes (also starring LeBlanc). While details are currently scant (as is any certain commitment from any of these central players), I would speculate this will be a retrospective where everyone will swap stories about the entire series from beginning to end. Laughter will be shared, tears will be shed, we’ll learn stuff we never knew. In other words — it’ll be charming AF.

The last time we got a near-Friends reunion was in 2016, when five of the six cast members participated in an NBC special honoring Friends director and sitcom vet James Burrows (Perry did not participate). Since then, the cast members have kept busy. LeBlanc has been on the aforementioned Episodes, Aniston recently returned to TV in Apple TV+’s The Morning Show, Schwimmer is in Netflix’s The Laundromat, Kudrow recurred on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Cox has been creating and producing content for Facebook, and Perry played Ted Kennedy in miniseries The Kennedys: After Camelot. If HBO Max can make this reunion special happen (and something tells us they will spare no expense to do so), they will have quite the calling card to their streaming service.