Why a Friends reboot is never going to happen

Good for them for sticking to their principles. How rare in Hollywood.

Doing a Friends reboot would be challenging.

Some shows naturally seem to work better off of a reboot than others (not sure why this is).

Will & Grace is a show that seems to do well with a reboot.

I guess shows that possibly didn't have a definite or clear "ending" could maybe feel more natural if they pick up again several years later or such.

I also guess some original shows weren't able to drag on long enough and in the right way to even put a reboot in to consideration maybe.

But picturing a Friends reboot is difficult for me at least. Even if it was done (and it probably could be) I can't imagine it getting too much positive feedback as it would feel forced unless the writing or everything is very much like before and there's nothing spotty or "off" about things like the setup and situations like in the classic Friends format people are probably used to.

But I don't know I guess. I get the idea that maybe not every show needs to be done again, but I have nothing against the attempt. Maybe it could work, but probably won't be easy.

Right you can’t reboot this, but someone suggested a new generation version with adult Ben, Emma, Janice’s kid + combination of Bing twins and Buffay triplets, which I think could work. You can have the original casts doing cameos as parents here and there.

Someone will eventually reboot it as a movie franchise, like has been done with "Charlie's Angels", "21 Jumpstreet", and many other TV properties. It will probably fail.

Not sure what could really be done with it. They tried recently with Sex and the City and it was just sad. The fun of most light hearted shows is watching clueless younger people. Watching clueless old people isn't fun.

They are all so wealthy there is no point in them doing it again. Not to mention reboots/comebacks seldom work. Look at the recent Sex and the City comeback, no one wants to see older people trying to navigate their lives and sort out petty problems.

And a lot of the "humour" in Friends came from the characters being a mess.

What if they made it with CGI in the original time frame?

Not meaning to derail the actual discussion here, but what has happened to the term "reboot" over the past decade or so? The word comes from computer terminology, meaning basically "start over again." That's what the Star Trek reboot movies (with Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, et al.) were trying to do. What people seem to be talking about here (and regarding Will & Grace, Mad About You, etc.) is more of a sequel (in movie jargon) or maybe a multi-episode reunion. But now that I've gotten that off my chest --

I think a continuation could be a lot of fun, but its best venue would be a cable or streaming channel, where it's OK to appeal to a niche audience, because heaven help us if they tried to appeal to everyone. If it didn't appeal very strongly to its original audience (including those who have met and loved it in syndication), it wouldn't be Friends.

Seeing as how it would be difficult to get all of the original cast in the same room at once, the suggestion of their now-adult kids as the continuity cast makes some sense, but I don't recall ever seeing one of those shows work very well, presumably because the actual drawing card is the original cast. So maybe find out which ones could make themselves available when and write the scripts around who's available that week, with different mixes in different episodes. And for those who can't often be on set, well hey this is the electronic age, so they could be in some "Zoom" scenes. The kids could also be in some episodes, as would be only natural, but please don't make them the primary cast.