'Friends' reunion special episode likely to be filmed at the end of summer
May 12, 2020
Washington D.C. [USA], May 12 : After being delayed indefinitely, the reunion special episode of famous sitcom 'Friends' will be taped at the end of the summer for HBO Max.
According to Variety, the announcement was made by WarnerMedia Entertainment and Direct-to-Consumer chairman Bob Greenblatt during a leadership summit.
The highly anticipated one-hour-long reunion special episode of the six "Friends" cast members was earlier slated to be on HBO Max at its launch on May 27.
"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. 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," Greenblatt told Variety.
"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," Variety quoted Greenblatt as saying.
He also said that the reunion special may take a virtual route if it got delayed for too long due to the current stay-at-home situation created due to the pandemic.
"But at the moment, we're trying to look to the future and get this thing done in a more conventional way, and I think it's worth waiting for," Variety quoted Greenblatt as saying.
"We would have loved to have had it on (HBO Max on) Day One, but at the same time, if we can get it launched in the fall, I think it'll be something that we can have the audience really looking forward to as well," he added.
The shooting of the reunion special episode that comes almost 26 years after its launch was earlier scheduled for March this year but got pushed back to May owing to the production shutdown amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer were all scheduled to reunite for the unscripted reunion. The special was set to film on Stage 24, the original "Friends" soundstage on the Warner Bros. Studio lot in Burbank.
