'Good Times' Live: Cast, Premiere Date and Everything Else to Know About ABC's New Special

ABC's is expanding its catalog of live specials.

The network is gearing up to premiere a holiday-themed live staging of Norman Lear's classic 1974 sitcom, Good Times, and the cast lineup is looking pretty dy-no-mite.

The cast roster, released on Thursday, includes big-screen heavy hitters like Viola Davis and Andre Braugher, who will star as the mother and father duo Florida Evans and James Evans, respectively. Jay Pharaoh will play the role of the lovable family comic J.J. while Asante Black stars as his brother Michael. Corinne Foxx will play the youngest Evans child, Thelma. Tiffany Haddish has been tapped for Florida's best friend and the Evans' family neighbor, Willona Woods. Emmy-winner Jharrel Jerome is also set to star in the live production, however, his role has yet to be specified.

Good Times' iconic theme song, originally sang by Jim Gilstrap & Blinky Williams, will also be included in the live special and is slated to be performed by Black-ish star Anthony Anderson and Patti LaBelle.

Good Times broke the mold for representation when it first premiered on CBS in 1974. A spinoff of the Lear-produced series Maude—which was technically a spinoff of All in the Family—Good Times was the first family-friendly series to feature an African American two-parent household. The show, created by Mike Evans and Eric Monte, originally featured actors Esther Rolle and John Amos as the leading couple and followed their lives raising their children in a project housing unit in Chicago. Good Times aired on CBS for six seasons before it ended—with the family finally relocating out of the projects and into their own home—in 1979.

Good Times is just the latest of a string of Lear's Live in Front of a Studio Audience sitcoms to be performed on ABC. Episodes of Lear's All in the Family and The Jeffersons premiered back in May, drawing an average of 14.29 million viewers. The special was even nominated for three Emmys and nabbed the award for Outstanding Variety Special (Live).

ABC will air another All in the Family live episode in addition to Good Times. Woody Harrelson, Marisa Tomei, Ellie Kemper and Ike Barinholtz are all back to reprise their roles of Archie and Edith Bunker, Gloria Stivic and Meathead, respectively. However, this time around they'll be joined with a few new faces including actors Kevin Bacon, Jesse Eisenberg and Justina Machado. The newcomers' roles have yet to be revealed.

The newest live specials come following ABC's live rendition of The Little Mermaid, which starred Auli'I Cravalho as the famous mermaid, Ariel, and released in November.

All in the Family and Good Times live specials are set to premiere on ABC on December 18 starting at 8 p.m. ET.