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They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky — and coming to Netflix. Tim Burton is directing a new Addams Family spinoff series about Wednesday Addams, appropriately titled Wednesday.
The streaming service announced the series in February 2021 and revealed the first look at the show’s artwork, which showed a silhouetted Wednesday playing the cello with a large knife instead of a bow.
Few other details about the eight-episode series have been released, but given Burton’s affection for horror-inspired, goth-tinged aesthetics, he and the Addamses should be a great fit.
The director, who will make his first foray into television with Wednesday, rose to prominence in the 1980s with Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice and Batman. His next project, 1990’s Edward Scissorhands, arguably made stars of Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder (and was memorably parodied by Timothée Chalamet in a 2021 Super Bowl commercial).
Throughout his career, he’s repeatedly collaborated with many of the same actors, including Depp, Michael Keaton, Christina Ricci, Michelle Pfeiffer and his ex-girlfriend, Helena Bonham Carter. So far, none of those people have been announced as having any involvement in Wednesday, but it doesn’t hurt to dream about a bewigged Pfeiffer as family matriarch Morticia.
The Addams Family began as a series of single-panel New Yorker cartoons drawn by illustrator Charles Addams, running from 1938 until his death in 1988. The first Hollywood adaptation was a half-hour sitcom that ran from 1964 to 1966. Two animated series followed in 1973 and 1992, and a live-action series titled The New Addams Family ran from 1998 to 2001.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q73UhUTs6y0
The first big-screen adaptation hit theaters in 1991, with a cast that included Ricci as Wednesday, as well as Anjelica Huston, Raul Julia and Christopher Lloyd. The sequel, Addams Family Values, premiered in 1993 and was followed by a direct-to-video reboot in 1998.
Finally, the spooky crew came back yet again in 2019’s animated The Addams Family, featuring voice work by Charlize Theron, Oscar Isaac and Snoop Dogg as Cousin Itt. A sequel to that version is due out in November 2021. Oh, and there was also a Broadway musical that premiered in 2010.
All of which is to say that this is hardly the first time someone’s tried to bring back the Addamses. It’s not even the first time Burton has tried to do so — he was attached to a stop-motion film version that was canceled in 2013.
It is, however, the first time anyone’s focused on Wednesday Addams alone, which is great news for fans of pigtail braids and the color black. Keep scrolling to find out everything we know so far about Wednesday:
They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky — and coming to Netflix. Tim Burton is directing a new Addams Family spinoff series about Wednesday Addams, appropriately titled Wednesday.
The streaming service announced the series in February 2021 and revealed the first look at the show’s artwork, which showed a silhouetted Wednesday playing the cello with a large knife instead of a bow.
Few other details about the eight-episode series have been released, but given Burton’s affection for horror-inspired, goth-tinged aesthetics, he and the Addamses should be a great fit.
The director, who will make his first foray into television with Wednesday, rose to prominence in the 1980s with Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice and Batman. His next project, 1990’s Edward Scissorhands, arguably made stars of Johnny Depp and Winona Ryder (and was memorably parodied by Timothée Chalamet in a 2021 Super Bowl commercial).
Throughout his career, he’s repeatedly collaborated with many of the same actors, including Depp, Michael Keaton, Christina Ricci, Michelle Pfeiffer and his ex-girlfriend, Helena Bonham Carter. So far, none of those people have been announced as having any involvement in Wednesday, but it doesn’t hurt to dream about a bewigged Pfeiffer as family matriarch Morticia.
The Addams Family began as a series of single-panel New Yorker cartoons drawn by illustrator Charles Addams, running from 1938 until his death in 1988. The first Hollywood adaptation was a half-hour sitcom that ran from 1964 to 1966. Two animated series followed in 1973 and 1992, and a live-action series titled The New Addams Family ran from 1998 to 2001.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q73UhUTs6y0
The first big-screen adaptation hit theaters in 1991, with a cast that included Ricci as Wednesday, as well as Anjelica Huston, Raul Julia and Christopher Lloyd. The sequel, Addams Family Values, premiered in 1993 and was followed by a direct-to-video reboot in 1998.
Finally, the spooky crew came back yet again in 2019’s animated The Addams Family, featuring voice work by Charlize Theron, Oscar Isaac and Snoop Dogg as Cousin Itt. A sequel to that version is due out in November 2021. Oh, and there was also a Broadway musical that premiered in 2010.
All of which is to say that this is hardly the first time someone’s tried to bring back the Addamses. It’s not even the first time Burton has tried to do so — he was attached to a stop-motion film version that was canceled in 2013.
It is, however, the first time anyone’s focused on Wednesday Addams alone, which is great news for fans of pigtail braids and the color black. Keep scrolling to find out everything we know so far about Wednesday:
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Credit: Moviestore/Shutterstock
Addams Cred
There are several Addams Family alums slated to join the project behind the scenes. Andrew Mittman, Gail Berman and Kevin Miserocchi, all of whom worked on the 2019 Addams Family, are set to executive produce alongside Jonathan Glickman, who’s an executive producer on The Addams Family 2.
Credit: Netflix
The Plot
The show will follow Wednesday during her school days at Nevermore Academy. According to a press release, this includes Wednesday’s “attempts to master her emerging psychic ability,” as well as her mission to “thwart a monstrous killing spree that has terrorized the local town and solve the supernatural mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago.”
Credit: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP/Shutterstock; MediaPunch/Shutterstock
Wednesday’s Parents
In August 2021, Netflix announced that Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán were cast as Wednesday’s parents, Morticia and Gomez Addams. “Thrilled!!!!” the Narcos alum wrote via Twitter after the news broke.
Credit: Shutterstock (4)
The Rest of the Family is Complete
Netflix rounded out the cast for the Addams Family spinoff with 10 additional main characters, the streaming platform confirmed via a press release.
Hunter Doohan, Georgie Farmer, Moosa Mostafa, Emma Myers, Naomi J. Ogawa, Joy Sunday, Percy Hynes White, Thora Birch, Riki Lindhome and Jamie McShane round out the Wednesday cast as various classmates, friends and neighbors of Ortega’s peculiar character.
In December 2021, Birch exited the project for personal reasons.
Credit: MediaPunch/Shutterstock
School Is in Session
Gwendoline Christie was announced in September 2021 as a series regular. The Game of Thrones alum will play Larissa Weems, the principal of Nevermore Academy who “still has an axe to grind” with former classmate Morticia Addams (Zeta-Jones).
Credit: Maurizio D’Avanzo/IPA/Shutterstock; Matt Baron/Shutterstock
A Familiar Soundtrack
Burton is once again teaming up with composer Danny Elfman for the series. Deadline reported in December 2021 that the former Oingo Boingo frontman will write the score, as well as an original theme for the show.
The pair have worked together for nearly 40 years on projects including Beetlejuice, Batman and Edward Scissorhands. They last worked together on 2019’s Dumbo.
Credit: Anthony Harvey/Shutterstock
An Iconic Addition
In March 2022, Deadline reported that Ricci, who played Wednesday in 1991’s The Addams Family and its sequel Addams Family Values, signed on to the Netflix series. The outlet confirmed that she will be playing an undisclosed role that is not an older version of Wednesday.
Credit: Broadimage/Shutterstock
Wednesday Is Ready
In May 2021, Netflix announced that Jenna Ortega will play Wednesday in the new series. The You alum confirmed the news with a selfie posted to Instagram that showed her holding a script for the first episode. “New chapter,” she wrote. “Hope I can do Wednesday Addams justice.”
Credit: Netflix
‘A Grave Terror’
In June 2022, Netflix released a brief teaser for the show featuring Thing, the disembodied hand who acts as a kind of butler for the Addams family. “Heed my warning,” read the caption on the clip. “A grave terror approaches. Her name is … Wednesday.”
Credit: MATTHIAS CLAMER/NETFLIX
Wednesday’s New Look
In a June 2022 teaser, Netflix unveiled the first look at Ortega in character as Wednesday Addams. The classic elements remain with a black dress, white collar and pigtail braids. However, the dress has been updated for 2022 with puffy shoulders and a pattern to add a little dimension to her ensemble. She’s also the first onscreen actress to have bangs while playing everyone’s favorite gothic gal.
Credit: Shutterstock (2)
Christina Ricci Is On Board
Ricci praised the “super fun” series during an interview with Variety in June 2022. “I loved working with Tim [Burton]. I worked with Gwendolyn Christie, it was amazing. And Jenna is incredible,” the Yellowjackets star gushed. “I saw some of the wardrobe photos before I went [to set] so I knew [what she looked like in character] and I was like, it’s such a great modern take on Wednesday. It’s so true tonally to the heart and soul of [the original], but then it’s incredibly modern and it’s great.”
Credit: Matthias Clamer/Netflix
Gang’s All Here
Netflix released an official teaser photo of the Addams Family unit in August 2022, showing Ortega’s Wednesday with Zeta-Jones as Morticia, Guzmán as Gomez and Isaac Ordonez as Pugsley.
For Burton’s move to the small screen, he brought along his trusted costume designer, four-time Oscar winner Colleen Atwood, to give the characters their signature gothic threads with a few updated touches.
“He wanted the silhouette to look more like the Charles Addams cartoons, which is Gomez shorter than Morticia, versus the kind of suave Raul Julia version in the movies,” one of the show’s creators, Adam Gough, told Vanity Fair in August 2022.
“It’s something that lives within the Venn diagram of what happened before, but it’s its own thing,” Gough’s cocreator, Miles Millar, added. “It’s not trying to be the movies or the ’60s TV show. That was very important to us and very important to Tim.”
Credit: YouTube
The First Look
The August 2022 trailer revealed Wednesday is expelled from a typical high school and sent to Nevermore Academy, which is where Gomez and Morticia first met. Her new learning institution seems to have all the murder and mystery Wednesday could want in her high school experience.
Credit: Courtesy Of Netflix
Making It Her Own
In a featurette released by Netflix in August 2022, Ortega opened up about how she prepared for the iconic role of Wednesday Addams and the importance of making the character feel fresh.
“It was really important to me that I did something different, even though she’s been done so flawlessly in the past,” the Scream star explained. “She’s more socially awkward. There’s a confidence there, but it’s more concealed.”
Ortega also revealed that she attended cello and fencing lessons twice a week and even created her own specific walk for the character, saying she wanted her to be “specific and certain and assertive.”
Credit: Courtesy of Netflix
The Premiere Date
Wednesday will make its Netflix debut on November 23.
Credit: Vlad Cioplea/Netflix; Netflix/YouTube
The Official Trailer
Netflix premiered Wednesday’s official trailer during New York Comic Con in October 2022, which featured the first looks at Ricci and Armisen’s roles. While the Saturday Night Live alum will tackle Uncle Fester in the spinoff, the OG Wednesday is set to play new character Miss Thornhill.
Credit: Shutterstock (2)
An ‘Unspoken Agreement’
The You actress revealed in an interview with Entertainment Tonight in October 2022 that she did not get to pick Ricci’s brain about the iconic character. “It was weird, it was like an unspoken agreement that we had. When we first locked eyes, we were just, ‘Let’s never talk about her.’”
Credit: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP/Shutterstock ; Snap/Shutterstock
Getting Into Character
Fred Armisen opened up about how he prepared for the role as Fester Addams, revealing to Entertainment Tonight in November 2022 that he studied Christopher Lloyd’s performances from the ’90s films Addams Family and Addams Family Values to ensure he could bring the famous uncle to life.
“I do study that [and] going back to the original TV show as well,” he shared. “Just to make sure there’s some sort of momentum all the way through. I just kept the tradition of what Fester is ’cause everyone added their own little version of it.”
The Portlandia alum noted that while he wanted to honor the character’s legacy, he also wanted to bring his own updated take. “But it’s basically, there’s one set of rules for who Fester is, I think, and I wanted to keep it at that,” Armisen said.
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Eliza Thompson
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