Netflix picks up Good Times cartoon from Norman Lear, Steph Curry, and… Seth MacFarlane
Every old thing must someday be repurposed into a new thing, and now the eternal much of progress has come for the classic sitcom Good Times. According to Variety, original executive producer Norman Lear is teaming up with Netflix for an animated reboot of the series with Steph Curry and Seth MacFarlane on board as producers. (MacFarlane presumably has some kind of overall monopoly on animated sitcoms, so Lear and Netflix had to go through him or risk being the subject of some withering monologue from Brian on Family Guy.)
The official premise for the show is that it will follow “the Evans family as they navigate today’s world and contemporary social issues” while “[reminding] us that with the love of our family, we can keep our heads above water.” That seems to imply that it will be the same basic show but set in the present day, which seems like the most obvious route for this kind of sitcom revival, and Variety says it will be created and showrun by The Boondocks’ and Black Dynamite’ Carl Jones. In a statement, he said that this new take will be “animated and a little edgier,” adding that “the struggle has just gotten strugglier.”
The general idea for this is at least partially inspired by two things: The live Good Times thing on ABC a few months ago and the COVID-necessitated animated episode of Lear’s other sitcom revival, One Day At A Time. Clearly there’s some demand for both Good Times and animated sitcoms that used to be live-action sitcoms, so this seems like a natural progression.