[imagesource: NBC]

So we know that the Friends reunion, which has now been aired all over the world, paid the six buddies a decent salary for showing up again after all these years.

In fact, they got up to $5 million apiece, according to one knowledgeable source giving the inside scoop to Forbes.

Now more than ever, I wish I was a part of the gang.

While Monica, Phoebe, Rachel, Chandler, Joey, and Ross got to take home an amazing salary for a day’s work, it is apparently pittance compared with what they have made across the sitcom’s nearly three-decade-long run:

The wildly popular television comedy generated nearly $1,4 billion in earnings since Friends’ broadcast debut in 1994, according to Forbes estimates.

Of that, Forbes estimates that the six Friends stars received nearly $816 million in pre-tax earnings, or roughly $136 million each.

Friends was so popular when it aired from 1994 to 2004 as an anchor on NBC’s “Must-See TV” for Thursday night that it was drawing in an average of 25 million nightly viewers.

But there wasn’t always cash dollar bills flowing in from the show.

For the first four years, Warner Bros. lost money on the show, gambling that it would pay off later when syndication kicked in.

In Friends‘ fifth season, NBC was so intent on keeping the sitcom in its Thursday night lineup that it agreed to cover the costs of production:

Over its 10-year broadcast run that overhead included an estimated $70 million in producer fees for Bright-Kauffman-Crane and almost $100 million for the stars, whose salaries rose from a modest $22 500 per episode fee in the first season to $1 million-a-show rate in the final two years, making Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow the highest-paid actresses at that time.

Then, when the show entered syndication and Warner Bros. had enough episodes to begin selling reruns to local stations, cable networks, and channels outside the US, the deals amounted to around $4,8 billion for the production company.

Naturally, the cast and creators also get some of the reruns spoils:

After deducting costs for distribution, marketing and related administration expenses, Forbes estimates syndication proceeds of $260 million for the cast and at least $475 million for Bright-Kauffman-Crane, based on US data provided by S&P Global and conversations with lawyers, agents and executives close to the deals.

Aniston is probably the most successful of the six, still making it on to Forbes’ list of highest-paid actresses over the years, and boasting a net worth of around $200 million.

So, the Friends theme song that complains “job’s a joke, you’re broke, your love life’s DOA” has no place here, then.

Here’s Forbes breaking it down nice and simply in a video to finish:

[source:forbes]