TV & Movies
The Friends Creators Just Shut Down This Popular Reboot Idea
While celebrating the sitcom’s 30th anniversary, the creative team said they get the same revival pitch “all the time.”
For many devoted fans, Friends remains an endlessly rewatchable sitcom that needs no reboot. After all, there are 10 seasons and more than 200 episodes to choose from whenever you’re craving something as familiar as the Central Perk couch.
But there are Friends viewers who aren’t quite content to leave the hit sitcom alone. During an interview with Today to celebrate the show’s 30th anniversary, co-creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane, along with executive producer Kevin Bright, opened up about fans’ requests for a revival.
They’ve Heard Your Pitches
“You have preteens coming up to you, telling you how much they love your show, and asking you, ‘Will there be more episodes?’” Bright shared in the new chat, which aired on Sept. 20.
“We get that a lot,” Kauffman agreed. “I get emails about it all the time. And everybody has a great idea — and the great idea is, their kids growing up and doing a Friends show.”
When asked what they thought about that idea, Crane made the group’s position perfectly clear. “Oh, no,” he said. “No, no, no.”
The Fate Of A Friends Reboot
Indeed, the idea for such a sequel series is floated around social media fairly often, and there would certainly be enough characters to make it work. Ross’ son, Ben, would be just about 30 today, while the rest of the kiddos introduced on the show — Emma, the triplets, and Monica and Chandler’s twins, Jack and Erica — would be at various stages of their 20s.
Sure, it might be fun to speculate: What if Emma became a paleontologist? Which of the twins is more Monica-coded, and which more Chandler? But alas, don’t expect these questions to be answered anywhere other than, say, Reddit theory threads.
It’s true that other classic shows have returned to tell the stories of main characters’ kids, from Degrassi: The Next Generation to That ’90s Show. But the Friends creative team has been vocal about letting the original show be.
“I think everyone on Friends respects that it was just this perfect thing,” Todd Stevens, one of the show’s producers, told The New York Times in 2019. “It was lightning in a bottle — I don’t think you can revisit that 25 years later and expect that those ions will still be so charged.”
Given the steady success of the show (fans are still obsessed with spotting continuity errors and learning all the behind-the-scenes lore), Crane told the paper that rebooting Friends would be “like winning the lottery and then buying more tickets.”
