Good Times cast hoping to crowdfund movie

Former cast members of 1970s US sitcom Good Times have turned to crowd-funding site Kickstarter to fund ‘docu-drama-comedy’ movie.

The crowdfunding is hoping to raise $1M but so far has around $4,000 raised with 16 days remaining.

Bernadette Stanis, Jimmie Walker, John Amos, Ralph Carter and Ja’Net DuBois are part of the new project, with Johnny Brown, who played Bookman, also likely to be involved. Esther Rolle died in 1998.

The Original Good Times Cast Movie is being planned without the involvement of creator Norman Lear and rights owner Sony.

“In the case of Good Times there is going to be a comparison, but it’s not an infringement of copyright,” said attorney Shaun Weiss.

“What we are doing is bringing a new era into the cast. The characters have never been copyrighted or trademarked.

“The cast are all friends, they are united” said Weiss. “The best thing in the world is taking the popularity in the TV show and bringing closure to it a different way. The whole premise of the movie is to show the Evans family in the future and what they’ve all become without bringing in the old. If there is a piece of the old show that would be used, we understand that we would have to get clearance, but that is not the case. We are not going to tread on the old Good Times. What we are doing is using the characters and doing something new and telling a very different story.”

Weiss maintains Sony are the rights holder to the DVDs and there are no plans to use footage, but they have applied to trademark the characters and license images and logo.

Suspect there is still the issue of “passing off”….

Source: Deadline