“Friends” was directed by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, premiered on September 22, 1994 and ended on May 6, 2004. The film’s content is simple but contains many profound meanings.
According to the announcement displayed on Netflix Vietnam, from November 1, 2024, this platform will no longer distribute the sitcom series “Friends”.
The message of “Friends” is that any young person must stumble before they can succeed. Those young people are Chandler Bing – statistical analyst, Monica Geller – chef, Rachel Green – fashion assistant, Ross Geller – paleontologist and Joey Tribbiani – freelance actor. “Friends” became a pop culture icon in the US through many fields such as fashion, architecture, traditional Western values…
The success of “Friends” is a great meaning about friendship, about being willing to accept each other’s shortcomings. “Friends” received an Emmy award for “Best Comedy Series”.
In 2020, thanks to social distancing due to the pandemic, this film once again scored with new audiences.
“Friends” has been available on Netflix since January 1, 2015. For many years, “Friends” has been one of the platform’s signature content in many regions. Netflix paid a whopping $118 million to become the only streaming service with the rights to the popular sitcom.
The film and television industry has recently begun to take steps to compete with Netflix rather than continue to extend Netflix’s rights to their content, including WarnerMedia’s. “Friends” is owned by Warner Bros. And WarnerMedia launched its own streaming service — called Max — in the fourth quarter of 2019.
The contract between Netflix and Warner Bros is a short-term contract and when the contract is about to expire, in 2020, Warner Bros wants to take back the sitcom and air it on its own streaming service.
Vietnam is not the first country to say goodbye to “Friends” on Netflix. Previously, in January 2020, Netflix in the US region removed “Friends” from the platform, followed by Canada, Australia, France, and Belgium in the following years.
Netflix also announced that it would remove the show in countries like Singapore and the Philippines at the same time as Vietnam. As of now, it is not known which other countries may be affected by the same decision.
