Is Friends leaving Netflix for Warner’s new streaming service?
The Friends cast has paid tribute to Matthew Perry. (Warner Bros. Television)
If Friends is your go-to show on Netflix, we’re sad to tell you that it’s likely to be removed in the coming months. Could that be any more annoying?
WarnerMedia has an upcoming streaming service through which they’ll have their hit sitcoms available along with other popular boxsets.
At the Television Critics Association winter press tour on Monday (11 February), Kevin Reilly, the WarnerMedia chief creative officer, said that he is not planning to share anything from WarnerMedia’s streaming service with competitors such as Netflix.
“Sharing destination assets is not a good model. My belief is they should be exclusive to the service.”
— Kevin Reilly, WarnerMedia chief creative officer,
“You can expect the crown jewels of Warner” — referring to hit shows like Friends and The Big Bang Theory — “will ultimately end up on the new service.”
He continued: “Sharing destination assets is not a good model. My belief is they should be exclusive to the service.”
As CW’s output deal with Netflix ends in spring, Reilly went on to say that they also have their eye on CW shows that have been dominating Netflix such as The Flash, Arrow and Riverdale.
“We’re very interested in putting that on our platform,” he said.
Friends has been available to stream on Netflix in the US since 2015 and has only been streaming in the UK since 2018.
The giant streamer Netflix reportedly paid $100 million to keep Friends until the end of 2019 — but the agreement is considered non-exclusive — allowing Warner’s unnamed, upcoming service to add Friends after it launches.
Carol and Susan’s lesbian wedding in Friends ‘blocked by some channels’
Friends showed one of the first lesbian weddings on TV. (NBC)
In other news, it was recently revealed that the Friends‘ lesbian wedding episode wasn’t shown by some NBC affiliates, according to actress Jane Sibbett, who played Carol.
During Season 2’s “The One with the Lesbian Wedding“, Carol married Susan—but not everyone in the US was able to watch the January 1996 episode.
In an interview with The Guardian, Sibbett said: “It was important to us, and the producers, that we showed a couple that was in love. But certain affiliates wouldn’t air the episode with our wedding. They completely blocked it out.”
