Netflix series Wednesday has unveiled the rest of the inhabitants of the Addams Family house in a portrait that's appropriately creepy and/or kooky.While the streaming giant's reboot of the classic 1960s sitcom The Addams Family, focused on Jenna Ortega's eponymous morose maiden, spent months touting teaser content, images of the fully-assembled Addams clan have finally arrived, courtesy of Vanity Fair. Indeed, fans of the franchise are now able to glimpse Catherine Zeta-Jones decked out in a familiar black Gothic gown as the lady of house, Morticia Addams. And right beside her, as always, is husband and family patriarch Gomez Addams, as played by the scene-stealing comedy talent Luis Guzmán. Lastly, the portrait shows Isaac Ordonez as Pugsley, the youngest of the Addams children and frequent target of Wednesday's macabre sibling activities.
Zeta-Jones, the 2003 Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner for Chicago, picks up a celebrated live-action tradition as Morticia Addams from the likes of Carolyn Jones on the original series and Anjelica Huston in 1990s films, not to mention the Charlize Theron-voiced version in the recent The Addams Family animated movies. Likewise, Guzmán, a standout supporting player on some of the most memorable films and television shows of the last four decades, picks up a role made famous by John Astin, Raul Julia and the animated performance of Oscar Issac. Ordonez similarly inherits the role made famous by Ken Weatherwax, Jimmy Workman and the voice work of Javon "Wanna" Walton.
Of course, the biggest shoes that needed filling for the series is Ortega's title character, Wednesday Addams, who, after being originally played by Lisa Loring, would become defined by the performance of Christina Ricci in the aforementioned '90s films The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993) by significantly upping the ante on the character's oddly lovable sadism. Auspiciously enough, Ricci, who's fielding a mystery role on the Netflix series, recently provided an emphatic stamp of approval to Ortega's Wednesday performance, stating, "Jenna is incredible. I saw some of the wardrobe photos before I went [to set] so I knew [what she looked like in character] and I was like, it's such a great modern take on Wednesday. It's so true tonally to the heart and soul of [the original], but it's then it's [sic] incredibly modern and it's great."
Netflix and MGM Television seem to be counting on the longevity of the Addams franchise, which has been made evident by the success of the recent animated features. Indeed, 2019's The Addams Family became a profitable offering with a $203 million worldwide box office gross against a $24 million budget. While the 2021 sequel The Addams Family 2 earned $119 million, significantly less than its predecessor (likely due to pandemic-era variables), it was still a profitable endeavor against a $47 million budget. Thus, as the franchise's longtime monster-mashing rival, The Munsters, prepares its own live-action reboot, Wednesday is poised to (literally) carve out a prominent place in a new streaming milieu. With the unique talents of Tim Burton as director and executive producer, that prospect is promising.
Wednesday is slated to premiere on Netflix sometime this fall.
Source: Vanity Fair