Filmmaker Tim Burton enters the macabre and supernatural world of the Addams Family with the new series ‘Wednesday'.
The Netflix show, which released on November 23, is based on Wednesday Addams, who usually starred in previous Addams Family shows or films as a child, but is now at an outcast high school trying to regain her psychic powers use and being a teenager.
Burton, known for blending the odd with the charming in films like Edward Scissorhands and Big Fish, is directing the first four of eight episodes of the new series.
“I feel like it was written for me because… I felt like her at school when I was a kid,” Burton told Reuters at the Lucca Comics and Games pop culture festival in Italy.
“This sense of family, school, technology, therapy, it just appealed to me … so it was very easy to relate to all of that. The Addams Family has been very well done in a number of ways. I just like the idea of Focus on Wednesday and seeing her as a teenager.”
The series delves into trauma and mental health with Wednesday, played by Jenna Ortega, visiting a therapist — scenes Burton said were personally important to him.
“I still have issues… I feel very fortunate… I've had an opportunity, whether it's drawing or filmmaking, to wield some of those demons and deal with some of those issues,” Burton said.
“And that's why it was important for me to see her … and how she handles it.”
In “Wednesday,” Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzman play Wednesday's parents, Morticia and Gomez Addams, while Christina Ricci, who portrayed Wednesday in two films from the 1990s, plays Miss Thornhill, a teacher.
Ricci previously worked with Burton on Sleepy Hollow alongside Johnny Depp, a frequent Burton collaborator.
When asked if he would work again with Depp, who is trying to rebuild his career after an ugly libel battle with ex-wife Amber Heard, Burton said, “If the right thing was around, then sure.”
“I don't really have any, I'll work with my ex-wife or my friends or this or that because … I only do things because I want to do them.”