Filmmaker Tim Burton stepped into the terrifying and supernatural world of the Addams family with a new series on Wednesday.
The Netflix show, set to release on November 23, is based on Wednesday Addams, usually seen as a kid in previous Addams Family shows or movies, but now in a high school for Outkast, trying to harness his psychic powers. And trying to be a teenager.
Tim Burton, known for his mix of strange and engaging in films including Edward Scissorhands and Big Fish, directed the first four episodes of the new series’ eight. “I feel like it was written for me because … I felt like I was in school as a boy,” Burton told Reuters at the Lucca Comics & Games Pop Culture Festival in Italy.
“That feeling about family, school, technology, medicine, it just spoke to me … so it was very easy to identify with all of them. The Addams family has been great in different ways. Me on Wednesday Love the idea of focusing and watching her as a teenager.”
The series addresses trauma and mental health with Wednesday, played by Jenna Ortega, visiting a therapist – Tim Burton said the scenes were important to him personally. Burton said, “I still have issues… I feel so lucky… I had an outlet, whether it was to make pictures or make movies, to exercise some of those demons and deal with those issues.” To deal with,” Burton said.
“And so watching her … and how she deals with it was important to me.”
Wednesday starred Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán as Wednesday’s parents, Morticia and Gomez Adams, while Christina Ricci, who portrayed Wednesday in two 1990s films, played teacher Miss Thornhill.
Ricci previously worked with Burton on Sleepy Hollow, alongside Johnny Depp, a frequent Burton collaborator. When asked if he would be working again with Depp, who is trying to rebuild his career after an ugly defamation fight with his ex-wife Amber Heard, Burton said: “If the right thing is around It certainly was.”
“I really don’t have anyone. I’m going to do things with my ex-wife or my friends or this or that because… I just do things because I want to do them.”