Annie is a television film which first aired on ABC on November 7, 1999. Like both the original Broadway musical, which it is based on, and the 1982 Columbia theatrical film version, also based on it, it is based on the cartoon, Little Orphan Annie by Harold Gray. The main idea is that the principal character, Annie, intends to find her parents who had left her with a note at the orphanage 11 years ago when she was a baby. It was the directing debut of Rob Marshall.