No release date has been announced for Netflix’s Wednesday, but it seems pretty safe to assume it’ll eventually drop… on a Wednesday. This week, we get the first real look at the series, which comes from the minds of showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (Smallville) and director Tim Burton.
Jenna Ortega stars as this generation’s Wednesday Addams, whose introduction comes complete with piranhas.
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“The only person who gets to torture my brother is me,” is Wednesday’s first line here, which feels appropriate: family loyalty and torment in one sweet sentence! Every member of the cast—including Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Addams, Luis Guzmán as Gomez Addams, and Gwendoline Christie as Wednesday’s new headmaster—looks fantastic, but the show itself has the high-gloss, visually unremarkable vibe of every other SFF-adjacent Netflix show, from Sabrina to Sandman.
But hey! This is only the first teaser; there’s still time for Wednesday to impress. The showrunners have trotted out the tired “long movie” comparison, telling The Hollywood Reporter that the goal “was to make it an eight-hour Tim Burton movie.” But they’ve also discussed how they want the show to be its own thing, not a remake or reboot. Millar told THR, “It’s something that lives within the Venn diagram of what happened before, but it’s its own thing. … It’s not trying to be the movies or the ’60s TV show. That was very important to us and very important to Tim.”
One curious note: There’s no sign of Uncle Fester (played very memorably by Christopher Lloyd in the ’90s movies). Gough said he and Millar have “no comment on Uncle Fester,” but added a classic “watch the show,” which suggests perhaps the character’s absence from the trailer and promotional push is intentional. Wacky cameo? Stunt casting? We’ll find out whenever Wednesday premieres this fall.
