'Friends' star earns $20 million a year from reruns after 15-year hiatus

According to a report by foreign media on January 14, the leading actors of "Friends" earn $20 million a year from reruns. Although "Friends" stopped broadcasting in May 2004 after the tenth season, its more than 200 episodes still bring extraordinary profits to the producer of the TV series, Time Warner Cable, and its leading actors.

According to the website of the American magazine "Market", each of the protagonists of this classic comedy, namely Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Mattel Blank, Matthew Perry and David Schwimmer, each received an average annual income of 20 million US dollars (1 US dollar is approximately 6.75 yuan) due to the rebroadcast of the show.

It is reported that Warner Bros. earns $1 billion a year from selling the rights to broadcast Friends, and each of the six main actors gets 2% of this huge income, which is $20 million. The report said that this number may rise.

Netflix has bought the exclusive rights to all the Friends series since 2015. The platform has just renewed its contract with Warner, but the terms of the contract seem to have changed: First, the streaming giant Netflix paid $80 million to $100 million to continue broadcasting Friends in 2019, while it previously paid around $30 million per year. Second, the contract is likely to be renewed every year, but the price should drop, because Netflix no longer has the exclusive rights to Friends, and Warner's owner AT&T may rebroadcast the series on its future digital services.

Some netizens said that the domestic "Wulin Waijia" should also be at this level.