Netflix: you’ll always have ‘Friends’

NETFLIX has paid $100 million (R1.4 billion) to continue streaming NBC’s Friends for their 130 million subscribers.

Viewers can now rest easy over the holidays, knowing that they can continue binge-watching Friends reruns, but this has come at a hefty price for the streaming giant.

Netflix had been paying the owners WarnerMedia $30m a year since 2015 for the privilege of licensing the “merry misadventures” of Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Joey, Chandler and Ross, but the price hiked up to $100m, starting in 2019, according to The New York Times.

Fans of the NBC ensemble sitcom initially panicked when they saw the January 1 expiration on the site, but their shock was quickly appeased by Netflix.

“The Holiday Armadillo has granted your wish: Friends will still be there for you in the US throughout 2019,” Netflix announced on Monday via Twitter.

Friends will also start streaming on AT&T’s new site and it’s already airing on TBS.

For 10 seasons spanning 1994-2004, fans tuned in on Thursday nights to watch the “six 20-something pals navigate the pitfalls of work, life and love in 1990s Manhattan”.

However, Friends creators David Crane and Marta Kauffman told THR Magazine in 2016 that a reunion “will never happen”, because it’s “about a time in your life when your friends are your family. Once you start having a family, that time of your life is over.”

Crane added: “We finished the show exactly the way we wanted to finish it. To revisit those characters just seems like a bad idea – you don’t want to see them hanging out in the coffee house now. And the good news is, you can see them whenever you want to. The show lives on with amazing vitality.” | Daily Mail