Fans can’t wait for Tim Burton’s take on Wednesday, the upcoming Netflix series which will see Jenna Ortega as the titular daughter of the Addams Family. While the dark, spooky, and mysterious tone of the series looks just like the thing that the celebrated director would want to work on, in a recent interview with Empire Magazine, Burton discussed what really attracted him to the script, as well as revealed that he shares the “same world view” with Wednesday herself.
Burton is well known to deliver gothic horror and fantasy features like the animated Corpse Bride, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and 2010’s dark fantasy Alice in Wonderland. Once upon a time, he was also in talks to make a stop-motion Addams Family film for Universal, which he revealed he was “intrigued” with, however the studio “wanted to go a more computer-generated way.” So when the script for Netflix's Wednesday arrived, the director divulged, “it just spoke to me about how I felt in school and how you feel about your parents, how you feel as a person...It gave the Addams Family a different kind of reality. It was an interesting combination.”
And certainly, the director’s sentiment echoes in the promotional material as well as the overall vibe of the upcoming series. In the introductory clip for the Nevermore Academy, where we’ll see Wednesday arriving to study and develop her psychic abilities, headmistress Larissa Weems (Gwendoline Christie) intriguingly asks, “In a world full of normies, do you feel like an outcast?” The clip like the series' trailers, features a slew of students and creatures who’ll certainly feel like an outcast in the normal world. The series will follow a teenage Wednesday, navigating her young adulthood as well as uncovering the mysteries that haunt her family long before she was born.
Wednesday Addams herself is the sarcastic, mysterious loner who the trailer shows has changed a few schools for the reasons we can all imagine. Burton can relate to it, recounting, “In 1976, I went to a high-school prom. It was the year Carrie came out. I felt like a male Carrie at that prom. I felt that feeling of having to be there but not be part of it. They don’t leave you, those feelings, as much as you want them to go.” For the uninitiated, Carrie follows a seventeen-year-old girl who on her prom night discovers that she possesses telekinetic powers and puts them to use when she is humiliated after a prank. Burton concludes, “You know, Wednesday and I have the same worldview.”
Wednesday drops on November 23 on Netflix, meanwhile, you can check out the trailer below: