Netflix‘s animated series reboot of Good Times has set Ranada Shepard (Young Love, Diary of a Future President) as co-creator of the series alongside Carl Jones. Shepard will also executive produce the comedy and serve as showrunner, Deadline has learned.
The Good Times voice cast will include JB Smoove, Yvette Nicole Brown, Jay Pharoah, Marsai Martin, Slink Johnson and Rashida “Sheedz” Olayiwola, sources close to production reveal exclusively. Pharoah portrayed original Evans family member J.J. Evans, originally played by Jimmie Walker in ABC’s Emmy Award-winning Live in Front of a Studio Audience: All In The Family and Good Times. As we revealed exclusively following the death of TV legend Norman Lear, he will guest-star in a Season 1 episode.
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The animated Good Times series finds the fourth generation of the Evans family living in apartment 17C of the last remaining housing projects in Chicago. It turns out the more things change the more they stay the same and keeping your head above water is as challenging as ever. The only thing tougher than life for this family is love, and there’s more than enough to go around.
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The Netflix and Sony Picture Television comedy has no confirmed release date but sources reveal they’re targeting a Summer 2024 premiere. Netflix and Sony PT declined to comment on this story.
Created by Mike Evans and Eric Monte, the original Good Times was television’s first African American two-parent family sitcom. It was a spinoff of Lear’s Maude, which itself was a spin-off of All in the Family.
Norman Lear and Brent Miller executive produced the animated series under their Act III Productions, Stephen Curry, Erick Peyton and Jeron Smith for Unanimous and Seth MacFarlane and Erica Huggins for Fuzzy Door.