Sylvie Claire / May 14, 2021
The special episode of Friends, which will see the reunion of the show's six friends after 17 years away, will be released on the HBO Max platform on May 27 and will feature a slew of guests, including Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga.
The arrival of this episode was originally intended to correspond with the launch, at the end of May 2020, of the HBO Max platform, which has acquired the entire Friends catalog.
But the pandemic had forced the production to postpone the shooting, which finally took place only last month, in Burbank, California.
In addition to the six main actors of the series, this gala episode will also see many stars, from Canadian singer Justin Bieber to the South Korean group BTS, including former footballer David Beckham and singer Lady Gaga, according to a statement released Thursday.
HBO Max posted a trailer online Thursday, which is limited to a long shot of the show's six heroes from behind, walking. The One Where They Get Back Together, says the episode's title, echoing similar wording from all the show's episodes, which all started with the one.
The series Friends (1994-2004) was a huge audience success and marked a generation of viewers.
Its arrival on Netflix in 2015 helped the platform attract a new audience, confirming the sitcom's undiminished popularity, a genre many said was on the decline.
In 2019, WarnerMedia Group, a subsidiary of AT&T Group, picked up the broadcast rights to the most popular sitcom of the past 20 years for $425 million over five years.
All 236 vintage episodes of Friends are already available on HBO Max since May 2020.
According to Variety magazine's website, the six historical actors, who are co-executive producers of the reunion episode, would have negotiated a fee of $2.5 million each for the shooting of this show alone.