Later this year Netflix will present a new look at Wednesday Addams of the famed Addams Family franchise. It is directed by Tim Burton, will follow the character as a teenager, and hew away from previous franchise looks, but, still will hit its general tone.
Co-creator Alfred Gough reveals the choice about the series he developed alongside frequent partner Miles Millar and Burton in a new article published by Vanity Fair today. The decision was ultimately Burton’s, who wanted to pay tribute to the comic strip with respect to Gomez Addams, and so people watching would not be constantly thinking about previous adaptations of the work, either the version made famous on television from 1964-77, or in the films fro 1991, 1993, 1998, and 2019, or in animated form in 2021 as well.
“He wanted the silhouette to look like the Charles Addams cartoons, which is Gomez shorter than Morticia, versus the kind of suave Raul Julia in the movies. He’s also incredibly debonair and romantic, and I think he has all those classic ingredients of the Gomez that we’ve seen come before, but he brings something also very different. That’s something that was very important to the show—that it didn’t feel like a remake or a reboot. It’s something that lives within the Venn diagram of what happened before, but it’s its own thing. It’s not trying to be the movies or the ’60s show. That was very important to us and to Tim.”
Later in the report, Gough reveals Burton partly signed on due to getting the opportunity to spend more time with characters beyond just the average length of a film. Gough also says their ambition with the piece was to make it an hours-long Burton movie. For Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday, the scariest thing is not the supernatural, but emotions expressed by family members.
“Wednesday’s not scared of sharks or anything, but she’s afraid of emotion, Their displays of affection drive Wednesday crazy.”
Wednesday also stars Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia, Luis Guzmán as Gomez, and Isaac Ordonez as Pugsley Addams. Uncle Fester is also in the show, though Gough has refused to say who is playing him, and audiences will only found once it airs. Fester has been previously played by Jackie Coogan, Christopher Lloyd, and Nick Kroll most recently in the animated productions.