The first teaser trailer for Tim Burton’s Wednesday series dropped, appropriately enough, on Wednesday, August 17th. The two-minute teaser opens with students arriving at Nancy Reagan High School. It all seems quite normal until their chatter ceases and they edge away from Wednesday as she walks purposefully down the hallway. This version of The Addams Family‘s Wednesday doesn’t take kindly to bullies torturing her brother – that’s her job, not theirs – and dumps a load of piranha into the pool where the water polo team’s practicing as payback for picking on her brother.
This is definitely not your parents’ Wednesday Addams.
Jenna Ortega (Scream, The Fallout) leads the cast in the title role. Catherine Zeta-Jones is Morticia Addams, Luis Guzmán is Gomez Addams, and Isaac Ordonez is Pugsley. The cast also includes Gwendoline Christie as Principal Larissa Weems, Jamie McShane as Sheriff Galpin, Percy Hynes White as Xavier Thorpe, Hunter Doohan as Tyler Galpin, Emma Myers as Enid Sinclair, and Joy Sunday as Bianca Barclay.
In addition, Naomi J Ogawa stars as Yoko Tanaka, Moosa Mostafa is Eugene Ottinger, Georgie Farmer is Ajax Petropolus, Riki Lindhome is Dr. Valerie Kinbott, and Christina Ricci (Wednesday in 1991’s The Addams Family and 1993’s Addams Family Values) plays Marilyn Thornhill.
Alfred Gough and Miles Millar serve as writers, executive producers, and showrunners. Tim Burton directs and also executive produces along with Steve Stark, Andrew Mittman (1.21 Entertainment), Kevin Miserocchi (Tee and Charles Addams Foundation), Kayla Alpert, Jonathan Glickman (Glickmania), Gail Berman, Tommy Harper, and Kevin Lafferty.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Alfred Gough says they were shocked when Tim Burton agreed to be a part of Wednesday. Burton turned down the 1991 Addams Family film and Gough admits he didn’t expect Burton to say yes to the series.
“He was interested in where it was going, the mystery of the show,” explained Gough. “He had a lot of questions about the previous television work we’d done, like how we were able to achieve it. He really loved that you had time to be with Wednesday and explore the character and you didn’t have to, you know, wrap things up in an hour and 45 minutes.”
Netflix hasn’t confirmed a premiere date but did release new photos from the series along with the following synopsis:
“The series is a sleuthing, supernaturally infused mystery charting Wednesday Addams’ years as a student at Nevermore Academy, where she attempts to master her emerging psychic ability, thwart a monstrous killing spree that has terrorized the local town, and solve the murder mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago — all while navigating her new and very tangled relationships at Nevermore.”
