It uses clips from all sorts of movies and TV shows, like Scream and Wolfs, plus AI-generated images of the cast standing together. “I still can’t believe so many years passed. After Chandler’s passing, we only reunited at his funeral,” someone who sounds a bit like Rachel Green says.

“I know it is a big ask, but we have to come together,” she adds, before a dramatic version of LCD Soundsystem’s All My Friends starts playing (the same one that plays in the IF trailer).

It’s managed to rack up more than 635,000 views on YouTube. However, much like Adam Sandler’s fake Simpsons movie, plenty of people in the comments know it’s not real – apart from a few.

“A Friends Reunion movie is in the making. Sad that one of them will not be in the movie,” one user wrote. “Nooo, I don’t think I could get through one millisecond of this, it’s a great tribute to Matty, but seriously way too sad for me,” another commented.

“This reunion is going to be so emotional. But I love this show,” a third wrote. “I think this is in bad taste. Friends is great for what it is. One reunion is nice. But it’s cheesy when you keep trying to revive it,” a fourth added.

Will a Friends movie ever happen?

A Friends movie was already off the table before Matthew Perry’s death, and now it’s unlikely the cast will ever reunite again.

HBO

A big-screen continuation of the series has insurmountable hurdles: it’d need to effectively translate the show’s success as a sitcom into a film, and that movie would need to meet extraordinary expectations.

In 2019, Jennifer Aniston was asked why a Friends movie hasn’t happened. “Because our producers wouldn’t want it, wouldn’t let us. Look, it’s not been without our desire to, because our fans have wanted it so much,” she told Variety.

“I mean, we haven’t all sat in a room. But would we have loved to have done something together? Yeah. It would have been fun. We could have redesigned it for a couple episodes. But whatever. Maybe it’s better this way, but we’ll never know.”

NBC

Before the reunion aired, executive producer Kevin Bright explained that he’d be open to a “great idea… but doing the Friends movie with this cast — older Friends — it’s not the same show.

“All the energy from the show wasn’t just the chemistry of the actors, but it was driven by youth. That, “What’s my job? Who am I going to be in love with? What am I going to do for the rest of my life?” That’s what drove the show,” he told The Hollywood Reporter.

“Imagining divorce issues and other things? None of it is appealing. If you’re going to do a truthful version of what would have happened to them, they can’t all still be married and together.”

The cast addressed the possibility of a movie during the special with an emphatic “no.”

“That’s all up to [creators] Marta [Kauffman] and David [Crane], and I once heard them say – and I completely agree — that they ended the show very nicely, everyone’s lives are very nice, and they would have to unravel all those good things in order for there to be stories,” Lisa Kudrow said.

“I don’t want anyone’s happy ending unraveled. Also, at my age, to say ‘floopy,’ stop, you have to grow up.”

In the meantime, check out our guide to new movies you should watch this month, and other TV shows coming to streaming.