Joey: The Spin off
 

Is it going to do the same thing for Matt Le Blanc that it did for Kelsey Grammar in Frasier the spin-off of cheers????

<font color=Silver>I dont think so</font>

It'll get canceled within a year

Frasier/Cheers > Joey/Friends

Yeah it's debuting in the USA later this year, dunno about the UK and canada though

This is a really old press release about the show, from sometime last year

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LOS ANGELES</FONT> -- It’s official. Joey Tribbiani is headed for California -- and life after "Friends."

NBC Thursday announced a deal with Matt LeBlanc to star in "Joey," a "Friends" spinoff featuring one of the beloved characters from TV’s top-rated comedy.

The deal also includes a two picture, feature film commitment for LeBlanc from Warner Bros. Pictures.

The TV series, which won’t include any other "Friends" cast members, will premiere in September 2004, in the newly vacated "Friends" timeslot at 8 p.m. Thursday. "Friends" ends its 10th and final season in May.

"I’m pleased to say that NBC’s wonderful relationship with such a once-in-a-decade series as ‘Friends’ will continue," says NBC Entertainment President Jeff Zucker. "Matt’s lovable character of Joey Tribbiani has come into his own in recent years on the series and Joey’s progression will continue as he emerges more on his own -- we know that everyone will be rooting for him."

No script has been written, but the show is believed to be based on a scenario in which Joey moves to Los Angeles to pursue his acting career, probably to be joined by a love interest and ensemble cast.

"Friends" creators Marta Kauffman and David Crane aren’t involved in the project -- they said last year that they had no interest in a spinoff -- but partner and "Friends" veteran Kevin S. Bright will executive-produce the series along with Scott Silveri and Shana Goldberg-Meehan. They’ve written recent story lines about soap actor Joey, who has become a more prominent character in the past two seasons.

LeBlanc will take a significant pay cut from the roughly $1 million per episode that he’ll make for the final season of "Friends." And unlike with other star-driven series, he won’t be a producer. But he’ll have input into casting and earn a greater share of the show’s profits if it’s successful.

A Joey spinoff has been in the discussion stages for nearly two years but has been put off each time "Friends" has been extended for an additional season.

Yet "Friends" producers, Warner Bros. Television and NBC insist this will be the final season, with only 18 episodes produced instead of the customary 22.

All along they saw LeBlanc -- who won his second Emmy nomination last week -- as the likeliest spinoff character. An idea to pair Joey with Matthew Perry’s Chandler Bing in a buddy comedy was rejected as too limiting.

Either way, it’s clear that NBC needs some help: The network hasn’t found a new comedy hit since "Will & Grace" premiered in 1998, and both "Friends" and the fading "Frasier" will be history in May. With CBS winning Thursdays last season, NBC views "Joey" as an insurance policy to protect its most important night.

No one expects "Joey" to capture as large an audience as "Friends," which averaged nearly 22 million viewers last season.

"Joey" will be expensive by new-sitcom standards, costing NBC nearly $2 million an episode, but still far short of the $10 million that the network is shelling out for the final year of "Friends."

OK I'll admit it... I watch Friends pretty regularly.

Now that I got that out of the way I can get to the topic. The character Joey has gone so far downhill in the past couple of seasons that I can't imagine how much I'd hate to watch the spinoff. In the first few seasons he was a little off sometimes, but he wasn't a complete freakin moron. Now he plays with cabbage patch dolls, doesn't understand anything about what others say, and can't even get out a decent sentence some of the time.

Long story short, I think the spinoff will be awful.

Yes, september 2004!! :shifty:

Friends is fu</>cking beauty! Don't love it or go out of my way to watch it or anything but it's a quality 30 mins of TV. I'd rather watch that than Smackdown anyway.

I watched Friends like 2 or 3 times, ever.

I did not enjoy it.

Love Friends, mad show.

Would definately watch Joey is it came out here, just to see how it went. What I'm wondering is that Joey's character has always been more of the dumber one liner guy, how's that going to carry a full show?

Be interesting to see how they carried it off and the cameos from the others would be mark out moments

I'm a huge friends start and will watch the spin-off it it shows in the UK -

could be hilarous or it could be awful - we'll just wait and see..........

Looks more miss than hot with people on here so far

I've watched that show. But I think a Joey spinoff will be a dud. There are other characters more interesting.

Frasier rules. That's one character that was developed nicely.

pretty weird

I've always liked friends.

Sounds like a cheap cash-in show to milk the Friends legacy and get a bit more advertising revenue.

Cynical? Yes...