Will Canadians be able to see the Friends‘ reunion special?
HBO Max announced this week that the much anticipated and delayed Friends: The Reunion special will start streaming on Wednesday, May 27. Above is the official teaser video, which frankly, with its dark, shadowy imagery, makes it look like the six friends are stepping out of the witness protection plan.
Besides welcoming back Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer, the unscripted special will feature special guests including David Beckham, Justin Bieber, James Corden, Lady Gaga, Elliott Gould, Mindy Kalling, Tom Selleck, Reese Witherspoon and others.
This special was originally supposed to help launch HBO Max — which is not available in Canada — in 2020. The pandemic pushed back those plans until the cast could reconvene at a safer time.
Original creators and executive producers Kevin Bright, Marta Kauffman, and David Crane are in on the reunion, with the six cast members — all also listed as executive producers — pocketing a reported three million each for the limo ride and back to Studio 24 on the Warners lot.
Friends ran ten seasons from 1994 to 2004, garnering 62 Emmy nominations and winning once as Best Comedy in 2002. It was recently ranked 38th all-time among TV sitcoms by Rolling Stone magazine — one ahead of black-ish. That Friends is so white-ish may be one reason why it ranks lower today than in previous polls. Still, it spawned a thousand imitators, and continues to be enormously popular with a new generation of fans.
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Currently, TBS — like HBO Max owned by WarnersMedia –is running all 236 episodes in a month-long marathon weekdays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. until June 4.
In Canada, Crave became the exclusive streaming home of Friends late last December. It’s reasonable to assume that the Bell-owned streaming service will also have an opportunity to offer the reunion special on May 27. Their PR department, however, emailed back Friday stating there was no news to share on Friends: The Reunion coming to Canada at this time.
Which doesn’t mean they won’t have news to share as early as next week.
