Friends Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Our brothers and sisters over at TV Squad have busted through the boob tube and brought with them the following juicy bits of must-see eye candy:

• First sign of Armageddon: Paula Abdul is looking to leave American Idol.
• Desperate Housewives is looking to bring Governor Sarah Palin on in a guest spot. But here's the big question: Is she really that desperate?
• Fan gets turned away for free taping of The Daily Show, and then writes a giant, stalker-ish rant for The Huffington Post.
• Kona Gallagher chips in with her Undercover hotties: ten guys on TV I secretly love. Not sure I get the Vincent D'Onofrio fixation, but I do dig the dude on Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
• MADTV gets canceled ... and we'd point you toward the protests, but it seems the show's four fans didn't put up much of a fight.
• And finally, here's one to brighten the mood: TV 101: How Friends caused the current financial crisis. Damn you Joey!

Well, you can now put this in your pipe and smoke it: According to a rep from Warners UK, there will not be a feature film based on the hit television show Friends. Apparently they were all set to start shooting until someone read my Fan Rant on the topic and called the whole thing off. Yeah, I wish I was that important. Actually, Warner Brothers UK issued the statement after rumors flew all over the internet last week that a Friends movie was in the works after Sex and the City achieved boffo box office success. We picked up the story when it was still in its infancy stages, then wrote about how bad of an idea it was, and, as such, are quite happy to hear it's a no go.

Additionally, reps for Courteney Cox Arquette, Matthew Perry, David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston have denied any involvement in the feature film, with comments ranging from "Nothing is happening in this regard, so the rumor is false" to "blah blah ... does anyone really care what these people have to say?" I'm actually very happy to hear this and hope it sticks because this is a series that belongs on TV and not on the big screen. Leave it alone ... and, instead, go give us another South Park flick.

Will any of you lose sleep over this Friends news?

Here's a stat that may or may not blow your mind: According to Box Office Mojo, Sex and the City has grossed $312 million worldwide. Yup. $312,533,654 to be exact -- for a movie based on a hit HBO show that went off the air a few years ago. Since we all know what happens when Hollywood gets a look at those kinds of numbers, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to predict what the future holds: plenty more TV-to-movie adaptations. We're practically guaranteed another Sex and the City flick, and earlier today Monika brought us news that the long-rumored Friends movie might be moving forward.

Honestly, why wouldn't it move forward? You're telling me Matt Leblanc, whose last credit on IMDb is Joey, is holding out for a massive paycheck? Same goes for Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, David Schwimmer, Courteney Cox and Jennifer Aniston, with the latter being the only one getting decent big-screen work (though, truth be told, she's about two movies away from becoming yesterday's news). The others are all showing up in bit parts, directing films that don't go anywhere and/or trying desperately to make the TV thing work again. Fact is, together they're a pot of gold. Apart and, well, we don't really care, do we?

But could a re-emergence on the big screen revive these careers? Could they somehow find a way to take the cutesy sitcom and turn it into a feature film people would actually want to see? Could Friends: The Movie make more money at the box office than Sex and the City? And should we care?

Back when I posted about television shows hitting the big screen in February, I included a joke Matthew Perry made about how the cast of Friends were "trying to organize a thing soon," but he meant a dinner, not a movie.

Did he, in fact, mean a movie? We can take this with a grain of salt right now, but The Daily Mail says that a film based on the popular series has gotten the green light to start filming in the next year and a half, with all of the actors interested in reprising their roles -- Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Matt LeBlanc, Lisa Kudrow, and David Schwimmer.

Basically, it's all said to be due to the success of Sex and the City, and their source says: "she [Aniston] and Courteney have already talked this summer about what they want out of a Friends movie, and if deals can be made with them, everything else can fall into place rather quickly." The rest of the piece has a bunch of particulars about money, and how the show is at the top of the TV-to-screen list.

Whether it's true or not, it makes sense. But do you want to see the friends reunite?

We're only a few months away from Sex and the City's big movie release. Of course, that leads to the question: What television show will get made into a movie next? We usually get geek and retro fare making the jump, but since this is a romantic comedy, the door will be open for a whole bunch of recently-wrapped series. Arrested Development is getting yet another stab at life, but what else could make it?

MTV recently talked with Birds of America co-stars Lauren Graham and Matthew Perry about the possibility of their super-popular shows becoming feature films. Graham, well, she says she doesn't know, no matter how many times people keep asking her -- and she has no idea what it would be about: "Nothing much happened; we just talked a lot." That's true, but a feature film could allow Amy Sherman-Palladino to finally give us that ending she referenced for so long, but that we never got, leaving us in an unfulfilled, post-Gilmore disappointment. Perry, meanwhile, says: "everyone's running around doing different things. I think we're trying to organize a thing soon." However, by "thing" he means a dinner with the Friends cast. Sneaky bugger.

Should SatC end up being a big money maker, methinks we'll at least hear a bunch of possible plans for these old shows. It's just too bad that it's too late for more My So-Called Life.

Which wrapped television series would you like to see on the big screen?

Seeing Courteney Cox in Zoom yesterday made me think, "Gee, I wonder what the heck the rest of the Friends are up to these days." This gave me an excellent opportunity to satisfy my freakish obsession for IMDb for the day by diving deep to see what else Cox-Arquette and her former cast mates are up to. If you're an IMDb addict like me, come take a look with me ...

Cox's close friend Jennifer Aniston has had a busy time in her personal life, what with breaking things off with Brad and hooking up with Vince (what do you think? Did she get an upgrade there?). Aniston wrapped 2006 early with The Break-Up, but appears to be gearing up for a busy 2007 with three films on her plate: Diary, a thriller whose description is "a married woman's diary is stolen and used against her"; The Senator's Wife, which, at the moment, shows no one but Aniston in the cast; and the one that shows the most promise from this vantage point, Wanted, in which she plays a framed cop who must break out of prison with her cellmate, played by Meryl Streep.

   • Big Momma's House 2 - In Martin Lawrence's desperate minstrel show, the comedian reprises his role as undercover FBI agent Malcolm Turner, again donning a fat suit to become the sassy, black Southern matron Big Momma. He has to stop a potentially destructive computer hacker, and the movie is broad, shameless and pandering in most every respect. Lawrence appears to assume that we automatically like him and Big Momma, and does little to endear them to us any further. Incessant mugging, weak slapstick and Teflon catchphrases fill in the many cracks of its already shaky foundation, leaving a hammy house of horrors that should have been condemned when it was still a half-baked pitch.
    • Grandma's Boy - Adam Sandler's longtime second-banana, Allen Covert, gets his shot at a lead in this stoner comedy, but despite his appealing, aw-shucks demeanor, the movie, about a 36-year-old video game tester who moves in with his grandmother and her two roommates, is just irredeemably stupid. It is sad to see three lovely ladies like Doris Roberts, Shirley Jones and Shirley Knight stooping for laughs like this, though based on the fact that practically no one saw it in theaters (or will go out of their way to rent the DVD), it is a very minor tragedy.

• Breakfast On Pluto - The Crying Game writer-director Neil Jordan never really does get into why Patrick “Kitten” Braden becomes a transvestite, but he does manage to save his film from being a rote and self-indulgent celebration of uniqueness when he bobs and then weaves a political cry (for Irish independence) into it. The criminally attractive Cillian Murphy plays Kitten a little too much like Mrs. Doubtfire, though he does sustain the character, and an incredible glam-packed soundtrack helps create an energetic sense of time and place.
• Deep Blue - While not as stunning as the likes of Winged Migration or March Of The Penguins, this BBC-produced nature film sure is pretty to look at. With a calming, minimalist narration by Pierce Brosnan (supplanting Michael Gambon's from the UK release) and a dreamy score by George Fenton, the underwater photography is stunning. The beast-on-beast violence is a bit intense, with one hapless sea lion meeting his end when two orcas play hacky-sack with his mangled corpse (in slow-motion, no less).

• Bukowski: Born in to This - There is a morbidly fascinating fly-on-the-wall vibe that pervades John Dullaghan's profile of the late Beat writer Charles Bukowski, a base familiarity that parallels the Ham On Rye author's own inimitable hard-lived life and style. Epic in scope (and length), first-time director Dullaghan compiles dozens of meticulously screened hours of archival footage, coupling the best of it with new interviews with Bukowski survivors to present a terrifically real character study of a little-studied real character. The watchable Chuck-alike Happy Hour, starring Anthony LaPaglia as a booze-addled writer, is also just out.