Director Tim Burton is reportedly developing a live-action TV series of The Addams Family, nearly three decades after he passed on the film version.
The Addams Family live-action movie came out in 1991 with Anjelica Huston (Morticia Addams), Raul Julia (Gomez Addams), Christopher Lloyd (Uncle Fester Addams), and Christina Ricci (Wednesday Addams) in the cast. Burton was originally tapped to direct, but he passed on the opportunity because was set to film a Batman sequel with Michael Keaton.
According to reports, Burton’s style has always been ideally suited for The Addams Family, especially after doing blockbuster movies like Edward Scissorhands (1990) and Beetlejuice (1988). While the director’s career didn’t suffer as a result of choosing Batman, studios and fans alike continue to hope for his version and vision of the well-loved eccentric clan.
So, the director is currently in talks to be part of a live-action TV series.
Show details, plot, cast, and release date
According to Deadline, Burton is considering an executive producer role in The Addams Family live-action show, and he’s still negotiating if he’ll direct all episodes or not. This would be the first TV project for Burton, who is mainly a big-screen director.
MGM TV will finance the production with Smallville scribes Alfred Gough and Miles Millar as showrunners and co-executive producers.
The series will apparently be told from the perspective of Wednesday Addams and set in the present day.
With Burton’s name attached, various networks and platforms are apparently interested in securing the rights to broadcast the TV series. A bidding war is underway, and Netflix has one of the most lucrative offers.
Expanding the franchise
The Addams Family is based on the 1938 cartoon series from Charles Addams, which has had many iterations on the big and small screen. The latest version is an animated movie released in 2019, which starred the voices of Oscar Isaac (Gomez), Charlize Theron (Morticia), Nic Kroll (Uncle Fester), and Chloe Grace Moretz (Wednesday).
The new animated movie became such a hit that a sequel has been planned with Bill Hader joining the cast as the new character, Cyrus. Greg Tiernan is directing this version, which has an October 2021 theatrical release.
Meanwhile, fans of Burton’s work are hoping the director will reunite with one of his many talents — Johnny Depp. The actor would be well-suited to play Gomez in the upcoming TV series.
But there are still no casting announcements to The Addams Family live-action as Burton, and MGM TV is still ironing out their deals.
Image courtesy of Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons