Director Tim Burton is the master of creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky. Now, his next project may be bringing all of those things together. Burton is reportedly attached to produce, and possibly direct, a live-action TV reboot of The Addams Family.
Deadline reports multiple networks are bidding on the package, with Netflix near the top of the list. Burton would be joined by the team behind Smallville, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, who’d be the primary show runners and writers. Their rumoured spin is a modern, 2020 take on Addams story from the perspective of the daughter of the family, Wednesday.
Though Burton is best known for his movies — Batman, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, etc — he has done TV before. Back in the 1990s, he helped turned Beetlejuice into animation and worked on the show Family Dog. Besides that though, he’s largely stayed in the world of features. However, his last few films, which include Dumbo and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, haven’t quite been up to the director’s highest highs, and in the ever changing world of entertainment, a chance to make a long form story with a family IP seems like a good move.
And really, the Addams have never left us. Besides the original TV show from the 1960s, Barry Sonnenfeld directed two hit Addams Family live action films in the 1990s. Then, just last year, there was an animated film released with a sequel coming next year. All that, plus this, goes to show that the idea of a seemingly weird family who ultimately love each other will never grow old.