Along with the upcoming The Addams Family 2 animated movie, we are getting news about Netflix making a new live-action TV series based around the creepy kooky family of the macabre. With weirdness master Director Tim Burton at the helm, Titled Wednesday, the brand new live-action comedy is described as a coming-of-age tale that shines a spotlight on Morticia and Gomez’s titular daughter. Netflix has announced via Twitter who will take on the iconic roles of the Addams clan.
Jenna Ortega as Wednesday
Jenna Ortega is a relatively new actress in the Hollywood scene, starting out in 2012, Ortega has had some recent success with roles in The Babysitter: Killer Queen (A highly underrated Netflix horror/comedy movie) and more recently voicing Brooklyn in the highly successful Jurassic Park: Camp Cretaceous animated series, also on Netflix. Ortega has the perfect look for Wednesday Addams, with a lot of fans of the show and 90s movies comparing Ortega to Christina Ricci, who played Wednesday Addams in the 1990s films. Ortega herself posted on her Instagram that she is excited for the role and hopes she can do the character justice.
Luis Guzman as Gomez Addams
In what has become the most highly criticized and talked about casting, Luis Guzman has been given the role of the charismatic, ultra suave, romantic with a death fetish: Gomez Addams. Guzman is more known as a comedian and long-term character actor, with movie roles in such hits as Crocodile Dundee II, Boogie Nights, The Bone Collector, Anger Management, and more. He’s more known for his TV roles, such as SeaQuest DSV, Code Black, and more. The issue people are having with Guzman in the Gomez role is his accent, which is very thick to the point where he sounds either hard to understand or slurring words, and given how pronounced and clear past Gomez actors like John Astin and Raul Julia were during their time, people are worried this casting will not work.
Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Addams
Stepping into the exceptionally slim corset of the original gothic mommy Morticia Addams is the legendary Catherine ZETA-JONES. While I understand it is hard for anyone to top the performances and looks of Carolyn Jones and Anjelica Huston that have become the base-line for the character (Though have you seen Christina Ricci these days… The perfect casting for Morticia with a nice call back too), Zeta-Jones really just feels like she was asked to do the role to add some “main-line star power” to the line-up. Having too many hits to mention here, I think you already know her background by now anyway. If she can live up to the status Morticia Addams has on-screen will be left to be seen.
When the series premieres, fans will follow along as Wednesday Addams heads off to Nevermore Academy in an effort to master her emerging psychic ability. Once there, she’ll find herself thwarting a monstrous killing spree that has terrorized the local town, in addition to solving the supernatural mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago — all while navigating her new and very tangled relationships at Nevermore.
Behind the camera, Al Gough and Miles Millar serving as showrunners of the MGM Television series. Meanwhile, executive producers on the project include Steve Stark (The Event), Andrew Mittman for 1.21 (The Addams Family), Kevin Miserocchi (Tee and Charles Addams Foundation), Kayla Alpert (Code Black), Jonathan Glickman for Glickmania (Addams Family 2), and Gail Berman (The Addams Family).
