TVSquad

Thanks to the success of the Sex and the City movie -- and talk of more to come -- the rumor mill has been bubbling with other TV shows making the leap to the big screen. In the case of Arrested Development, it sure sounds like the truth.

However, the Friends feature is a rumor that has no legs. Warners owns the property and on July 4th, even though all U.S. offices were closed for the holiday, denied the rumors via the London office.

Jayne Trotman, Warner's director of publicity, said of the Friends movie, "(There's) no truth in the story."

Just to be sure, Matthew Perry's press rep also denied the rumor. She told the BBC that nothing is happening and the rumor is just that, a shred of news with no value attached to it.

If there is one rumor that never dies it's the one about the possibility of a Friends reunion. Since the series finale aired in May 2004, rumors about a reunion popped up here, there and everywhere. Sometimes the rumor takes the form of "there will be another spinoff" (remember Joey?) but most of the time it's a "there are talks about a movie but one of the stars doesn't want to commit." This week's revival of the rumor is of the latter kind.

Since the last episode of the hit series Friends aired in May 2004, rumors have been flying around as to if and when a reunion would happen. Over the years, there have been reports that some of the actors didn't want to be part of a reunion, at least, not for a while. None of these reports were properly confirmed. However, this week comes the confirmation that David Schwimmer, who played the character of Ross, will not take part in a Friends reunion if there ever is one.

I don't get all the hoopla surrounding Lisa Kudrow. She played a ditzy blonde on Mad About You and then she played a higher-profile ditzy blonde on Friends. Now there's news that she has a development deal with NBC that could have her starring in a new show. Why??? It seemed to me that she totally phoned in a lot of her performances on Friends. Especially after she had her own baby in real life, but her character, Phoebe, was still pregnant on Friends. Watch those episodes and you'll see she doesn't even try to act like the belly is real. She sits down, stands up, and bounces around even though she's supposed to be pregnant with triplets.

It seems like the cast member of Friends that we've seen the least since the show ended two years ago is Lisa Kudrow. Sure, she starred in that HBO series The Comeback last year, but, for the most part, she's been keeping a low profile.

(Ok, Schwimmer's pretty much fallen off the face of the earth since the show ended. But Kudrow's certainly been lower-profile than the other four.)

Most of what Kudrow's been doing is developing shows (including The Comeback) under her production company's banner for Warner Brothers. But now her company, Is or Isn't Productions, has signed on with NBC Universal in a two-year development deal. Kudrow and her partner Dan Bucatinsky will keep working on shows in the background, though Kudrow might star in one of them if the right project comes along. Nice. Sounds like she's doing a lot better job handling her post-Friends career than, say, Jennifer Aniston, no?

[Photo: Getty Images]

Valerie and Mark decide to get away for the weekend to Palm Springs. They have a luxurious ride for the trip - Lincoln Navigators which, unfortunately, come accompanied by an annoying Lincoln rep who keeps popping out of the back seat like jack-in-the-box, reminding Mark that when we says anything about the car, he needs to say, "Lincoln Navigator", not just "car". Valerie keeps telling Jane, "Jane? He needs to stop that." They can't even listen to music in the car, excuse me, in the Lincoln Navigator, because then they'd have to pay for rights to the songs.

Val gets a call from her agent. "You're on speaker, so no bad news, okay?" she says, only half-jokingly. He tells her that Room and Bored has been benched for a retool, and that the network didn't like the direction of the last episode - they want to "chase the youth" market. "We need a new code word for 'bad news'," Val deadpans, "Because apparently the words 'bad news' aren't clear enough."

This episode of The Comeback finds Valerie and the Room and Bored cast preparing to shoot their first real episode. There's lots of excitement on the set. Valerie arrives to find she's been assigned a dressing room upstairs, away from the rest of the cast. 

They try to make it out like it a favor conferred, telling her that she got a dressing room with it's own bathroom. When she points out there's a downstairs dressing room with its own bath, she's told that Tom and Paulie G, the show's writers, wanted that room as their "hang out spot". So, upstairs to Siberia she goes.

• Fox says that it's taking Corey Clark's I-had-an-affair-with-Paula-Abdul claims seriously, responding to a complaint Clark had last week to a recent sketch on American Idol that seemed to poke fun at the situation.
• Mariah Carey's new single "We Belong Together" has become her 16th song to top the Billboard charts. Just behind Elvis and The Beatles. That's really depressing.
• Where's Dave Chappelle? In Ohio.
• A summary of all the winners and losers, ratings-wise, this season.
• In the print edition, an article about Lisa Kudrow and her new show HBO show Comeback (which debuts June 5), and why his Desperate Housewives death was a good thing for Steven Culp.