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Things We Saw Today: Wednesday Addams Will Have Her Own Netflix Series, With Direction From Tim Burton

Creepy and kooky?

By Feb 17th, 2021, 5:13 pm
Wednesday Addams

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Murmurings of a Tim Burton-produced Addams Family reboot began to bubble last October with news that Burton, along with writers and showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (Smallville), were shopping the project around. Well, they found a buyer and the project on the way to screens isn’t just a straight reboot, instead, it will be a coming of age mystery based on one of our favorite Addamses: Wednesday.

Okay. This sounds … interesting? It’s smart to not do a straight-up reboot of The Addams Family for a streaming show since that sort of sitcom structure doesn’t work very well on streaming, and instead go for something more serialized might suit the Netflix model better. Here’s the logline for the show that goes into more detail.

The series is a sleuthing, supernaturally infused mystery charting Wednesday Addams’ years as a student at Nevermore Academy. Wednesday’s attempts to master her emerging psychic ability, thwart a monstrous killing spree that has terrorized the local town, and solve the supernatural mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago — all while navigating her new and very tangled relationships at Nevermore.

So, lots to unpack here. Wednesday is psychic? That’s new but, fine, I guess it works. The thing with The Addams Family though wasn’t that they were specifically supernatural, just that they were very weird and, well, sorta murderous but in a nice way? And so this whole thing with Wednesday solving murders is … also strange since, in the movies at least, Wednesday was always a bit homicidal? But again, in like … a funny way.

Maybe this is a hard story to adapt, so, I guess we’ll see what they do here. I’m getting a very Chilling Adventure of Sabrina vibe and I like that so, maybe this will work. I still hope we see the rest of the Family as well. Maybe Tim Burton will cast Eva Greene as Morticia because that would honestly be perfect.

One concern I’ve already seen brought up is that we have three men listed above the line in a show about a young woman which is … not great. I hope they have a diverse writer’s room to make up for that. And I also think this series will live or die on casting its lead. Getting the right Wednesday will be essential, so good luck to the casting department.

One thing I’m more excited than worried about is the look of the series. It’s high time Burton gets back to his goth and creepy roots and I’m seriously excited to see what he does in a new medium with a property that is so perfectly suited to his style and aesthetic. If he can bring a little bit of Lydia Deetz to Wednesday, all the better.

And speaking of the Deetzes, I know I’ve already dream cast Eva Greene, but since she’s available now can we get Burton heroine Catherine O’Hara in here as like, a teacher at Evermore. Heck, Burton worked with Christina Ricci in Sleepy Hollow, and I would love to see her show up in a cameo too.

Also, kudos to Netflix for dropping this news on a Wednesday. Someone had their thinking cap on!

(via: NX on Netflix, image: Paramount)

Here are a few other things we saw today:

What did you see today?

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Author
Jessica Mason
Jessica Mason (she/her) is a writer based in Portland, Oregon with a focus on fandom, queer representation, and amazing women in film and television. She's a trained lawyer and opera singer as well as a mom and author.
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