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It’s almost been three decades, but Friends continues to receive abundant love from viewers. Starring Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer, and Lisa Kudrow, the family witnessed a huge blow due to the untimely demise of co-star Matthew Perry last year. The show yielded massive earnings for production house Warner Bros, the star cast, and the creators. Scroll below for a detailed analysis!
David Crane and Marta Kauffman created the American Television sitcom. It revolves around six friends in their 20s and 30s who live in Manhattan, New York, figuring out life. The series ran across ten seasons, with about 236 episodes in total. First aired in September 1994, the Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer starrer wrapped up in 2004. Fans were treated to a reunion special, Friends: The Reunion, in May 2021.
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As per a report by Forbes, Warner Bros has made an earth-staggering sum of $4.8 billion from Friends. This includes earnings from the television run, re-runs distributed to local stations, cable networks, and channels outside the US, and the colossal deal struck with Netflix and other streaming services.
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It is to be noted that the above numbers do not include revenue from DVD sales. The cast and creators of Friends also continue to take home a whopping sum every year from broadcast rights for syndicated reruns.
Friends has been able to live rent-free in the hearts of fans for years due to smart promotional strategies by the production house. Deducting the cost of administration expenses, distribution, and marketing, creators David Crane and Marta Kauffman have reportedly made $475 million from syndication proceeds over the years.
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Their salaries for the sitcom across its ten seasons remain unknown. But they were also working as executive producers on the show, which means they must have earned some additional income.
Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Courteney Cox, and Matthew Perry began their Friends journey with a salary of $22,500 per episode.
In the following season, Rachel Green (played by Jennifer Aniston) and Ross Geller (David Schwimmer) remained the highest-paid but demanded pay parity between the cast members.
The Friends cast renegotiated their salaries in the last two seasons and were paid $1 million per episode. They reportedly made about $90 million per person, excluding bonuses and royalties. In addition, they were paid 2%, which was about $20 million annually from re-runs of the sitcom.
The report by Forbes adds Jennifer Aniston and her pals got about $260 million from syndication proceeds till 2021, according to data provided by S&P Global. This means they made a total of about $800 million, everything inclusive.
When compared, the Friends cast made only about 16.6% compared to the production house Warner Bros!
Stay tuned to Koimoi for more interesting updates on Friends.
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