Tim Burton wants to add his signature touch to the iconic legacy of The Addams Family. Deadline has broken the story today that Burton is negotiating to executive produce and possibly direct all episodes of a new instalment in the horror-comedy franchise. Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (Smallville) are tackling the scripts, serving as showrunners, and executive produce alongside Burton.
MGM TV, the studio that controls rights to the IP, has financed the series’ development. They have been shopping around the project to multiple platforms, with Netflix being on the top of the list. There’s no word on who is set to star in this new series. Deadline notes that “the new live-action series would be set in present times and be from the perspective of Wednesday Addams and what the world would look like to her in 2020.”
The Addams Family is a long-running propertys, starting back in 1938 with the work from American cartoonist Charles Addams. The spooky family have had two live-action television series, two animated shows, two theatrically-released live-action films and a direct-to-video sequel in the 90s, and even an animated film in 2019. A sequel to the animated movie is also in the works for release in Halloween 2021.
This could be Burton’s second time adapting an iconic horror/comedy property, with him tackling the darkly campy ’70s series Dark Shadows. The filmmaker was also attached to a stop-motion animated adaptation of The Addams Family with Illumination Entertainment back in the early 2010s, although this was ultimately scrapped in 2013.
