Breaking: NBC Will Air ANNIE LIVE! This Holiday Season

Live musicals are coming back to your living room! According to Variety, producers Bob Greenblatt and Neil Meron will bring beloved Broadway musical Annie to NBC this holiday season. Also on the Annie Live! team are Alex Rudzinski, as the live TV director and executive producer and Lear deBessonet as the director.

Stephen Oremus will serve as music director and orchestrator, Sergio Trujillo will choreograph, Paul Tazewell will design costumes, and Jason Sherwood will act as scenic designer.

Previous live musicals on NBC have included The Sound of Music Live! (2013), Peter Pan Live! (2014), The Wiz Live! (2015), Hairspray Live! (2016) and Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert (2018).

"There are few musicals like 'Annie' where you know the words to every song and the overriding message, especially in the trying times we live in, is optimism," Meron told Variety. "The song 'Tomorrow' means more than ever now, and it's not lost on us that even Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal are impacted by this little orphan who simply believes in the goodness of everyone."

Annie is a Broadway musical based upon the popular Harold Gray comic strip Little Orphan Annie, with music by Charles Strouse, lyrics by Martin Charnin, and book by Thomas Meehan.

The original Broadway production opened in 1977 and ran for nearly six years, setting a record for the Alvin Theatre (now the Neil Simon Theatre). It spawned numerous productions in many countries, as well as national tours, and won seven Tony Awards, including the Tony Award for Best Musical. The musical's songs "Tomorrow" and "It's the Hard Knock Life" are among its most popular musical numbers.

Annie last played on Broadway at the Palace Theatre in 2012.