If Netflix’s viewing figures are anything to go off, it seems like most of us spent the past week watching Wednesday, the Addams Family spin-off directed by Tim Burton – king of Hot Topic merchandise and the director of light-hearted gothic fare like Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands.
It’s a combination that feels like a match made in heaven (or hell, rather): a television series telling the story of Wednesday Addams, and we’ve lapped it up. In less than a week, Netflix viewers watched 341.2 million hours of Wednesday, impressively beating out the original top spot series: season four of Stranger Things. If we break that down, that means that 50 million households have tuned in to the show since it started.
But it hasn’t all been good news. On social media, the series and its director have been called out for alleged racist undertones. The main criticism is that the two main Black characters in the series — popular girl Bianca Barclay (played by Joy Saunders) and the Mayor of Pilgrim World’s rich kid son Lucas Wilson (played by Iman Marson) — both terrorise and bully Wednesday and play a key part in her status as an outcast in early episodes. What’s more, some on social media have taken issue with the Mayor of Pilgrim World – a problematic amusement park that glosses over the violent colonial history of settlers and Native Americans – is Black too.
This is not the first time Tim Burton and his projects have been accused of racism. The director, who favours a pale and gaunt aesthetic in his works, was called out in 2016 after Samuel L. Jackson, who was cast in a minor role in the movie Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, commented that he was the only Black person in a Tim Burton movie. Burton then did not help the situation by responding to the backlash by comparing representation in cinema to “political correctness”. Wednesday is now the first project by the director with a non-white actor at the helm, with Jenna Ortega being of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage.
Based on the original 1938 comic book — which has since been made into two TV series, two iconic 90s movies, and an animated big-screen adventure in the 2010s — this is the first time since the 60s that audiences have had a short-form, real-life version of everybody’s favourite fucked-up family to watch. Tim is the show’s executive producer and director, while Alfred Gough and Miles Millar — the creative force behind much of the superhero TV series Smallville — are on writing duties.
Wednesday centres on Addams family daughter’s enrolment at Nevermore Academy, a school for children with magical powers. While there, she’s expected to hone her psychic ability, stop a massive killing spree from occurring, and make sense of the supernatural mystery that changed her family 25 years ago. Much like the famous movies, the film is a horror-mystery-comedy hybrid.
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The show’s been in the works for two years, and the cast that’s come together is quite impressive: Jenna Ortega, fresh off the back of X and the Scream franchise, has assumed the role of teenage tearaway Wednesday Addams. Meanwhile the iconic role of Morticia, famously played by Anjelica Huston, is now being assumed by Catherine Zeta-Jones. Game of Thrones’ Gwendoline Christie and 90s indie screen queen Thora Birch both have supporting roles too.
But perhaps the most novel addition to the cast is Christina Ricci herself, famous for playing Wednesday in the film’s iconic 90s series. In the new series, the trailer below shows, she plays Marilyn Thornhill, a teacher at Wednesday’s school.
Check out the full trailer for Wednesday below, and stream it on Netflix by clicking here.