Wednesday | |
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Genre | |
Created by | |
Based on | Characters by Charles Addams |
Starring |
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Theme music composer | Danny Elfman |
Composers |
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Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
No. of seasons | 1 |
No. of episodes | 8 |
Production | |
Executive producers |
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Producer | Carmen Pepelea |
Cinematography |
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Editors |
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Running time | 46–57 minutes |
Production companies |
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Distributor | Netflix Streaming Services |
Release | |
Original network | Netflix |
Original release | November 23, 2022 |
Wednesday is an American coming-of-age supernatural comedy horror streaming television series based on the character Wednesday Addams by Charles Addams. Created by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, it stars Jenna Ortega as the titular character, with Catherine Zeta-Jones, Luis Guzmán, Isaac Ordonez, Gwendoline Christie, Riki Lindhome, Jamie McShane, Fred Armisen, and Christina Ricci appearing in supporting roles. Four out of the eight episodes are directed by Tim Burton, who also serves as executive producer. It revolves around Wednesday Addams, who attempts to solve a monster mystery at her school.
Burton was previously involved with a cancelled stop-motion animated The Addams Family film. In October 2020, he was reported to be helming a television series, which was later given a series order by Netflix. Ortega was cast in part to represent the character's Latina heritage. Ricci, who had played the titular character in the 1991 film and its 1993 sequel, was asked by Burton to join the series in a supporting role. Filming took place in Romania between September 2021 and March 2022.
Wednesday premiered on November 16, 2022, and was released on Netflix on November 23 to predominantly positive reviews from critics, who praised Ortega's performance.[1] Within three weeks of release, it became the second-most watched English-language Netflix series. It received two Golden Globe nominations: Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy and Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy for Ortega.
Wednesday Addams is expelled from her school after dumping live piranhas into the school's pool in retaliation for the boys' water polo team bullying her brother, Pugsley. Consequently, her parents, Gomez and Morticia Addams, enroll her at their high school alma mater, Nevermore Academy, in the town of Jericho, Vermont, a private school for monstrous outcasts. Wednesday's cold, emotionless personality and her defiant nature make it difficult for her to connect with her schoolmates and cause her to run afoul of the school's principal. However, she discovers she has inherited her mother's psychic abilities which allow her to solve a local murder mystery.
No. | Title | Directed by | Written by | Original release date | |
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1 | "Wednesday's Child Is Full of Woe" | Tim Burton | Alfred Gough & Miles Millar | November 23, 2022 | |
Wednesday Addams, a high-school student, finds her brother Pugsley tied up in a locker. She sees a psychic vision of his bullies whom she attempts to kill in revenge but gets expelled. Her parents, Morticia and Gomez, decide to enroll her in Nevermore Academy, a school for outcasts in Jericho, Vermont. Meanwhile, a hiker is killed by an unknown creature near Nevermore. Wednesday's parents release Thing, a sentient disembodied hand, to watch over her. She meets her roommate Enid, her complete opposite, and duels with Bianca, the popular girl, after she bullies another boy, Rowan. Later, Wednesday is nearly killed by a falling gargoyle but is saved by Bianca's ex-boyfriend Xavier. After escaping her court-ordered therapy session, Wednesday meets Tyler, a coffee barista who agrees to help her escape from Nevermore. However, she is apprehended by principal Larissa Weems and taken back to the school. Later, Tyler and Wednesday meet at the local carnival, and Wednesday has a vision of Rowan's death. Rowan attempts to kill her but is murdered by the monster. | |||||
2 | "Woe Is the Loneliest Number" | Tim Burton | Alfred Gough & Miles Millar | November 23, 2022 | |
Wednesday convinces a skeptical Sheriff Galpin that the perpetrator of the murders is in fact a monster. Suddenly, Rowan reappears unharmed. Wednesday doubts her sanity and decides to investigate the murders herself. She roams the campus inquiring about Rowan and is told that he has been expelled. Meanwhile, Weems grows worried about Wednesday's visions, keeping close tabs on her. Wednesday confronts a defensive Rowan as he leaves the school and sends Thing to follow him. Rowan is revealed to be Weems who has shapeshifted into him, and Thing loses her. Wednesday has visions of a book belonging to an old students' society. In her search for the book, she overhears Bianca planning to rig the upcoming student tournament. Wednesday joins Enid to defeat Bianca and win the tournament. Later, Wednesday discovers a hidden library within the school, where she is captured. | |||||
3 | "Friend or Woe" | Tim Burton | Kayla Alpert | November 23, 2022 | |
Wednesday finds herself tied up and surrounded by members of an elite students' society, including Bianca and Xavier. Wednesday frees herself and leaves the library, taking one of the books with her. Weems orders Wednesday to play in the school's band at an upcoming town ceremony run by Mayor Noble Walker. A drawing in the book leads her to an exhibition at a local fair, where she notices the painting of a girl she had seen in her visions. In the forest, Wednesday envisions the girl—believed to be an old ancestor of hers—ready to be executed by Joseph Crackstone, the town's forefather intent on killing all outcasts, but she is able to escape. Wednesday is ambushed by the monster, which she discovers to be human. Back in town, Wednesday crashes the ceremony by having Thing destroy an inaugural statue of Joseph Crackstone and is scolded by Weems. While investigating a crime scene in the forest, police find a camera that managed to capture photographs of the monster. | |||||
4 | "Woe What a Night" | Tim Burton | Kayla Alpert | November 23, 2022 | |
Wednesday and Thing break into the coroner's office to copy the files of the monster's victims. In trying to identify a pattern, she finds that each victim has had bodyparts surgically removed. Wednesday becomes suspicious of Xavier and follows him into his art studio, where she discovers several drawings of the monster, leading her to the monster's lair. There, she retrieves one of its claws and gives it to Sheriff Galpin to match its DNA. Wednesday and Tyler attend a school dance together. Meanwhile, classmate Eugene, who is privy to Wednesday's investigative work, witnesses a cloaked figure detonating the monster's cave. The dance is interrupted by Mayor Walker's son Lucas who triggers the building's fire sprinklers in revenge for Wednesday disrupting the town ceremony. Wednesday senses that Eugene is in danger and heads into the forest, only to find him gravely injured by the monster. | |||||
5 | "You Reap What You Woe" | Gandja Monteiro | April Blair | November 23, 2022 | |
32 years earlier, Gomez Addams is arrested on suspicion of killing Garrett Gates, a descendant of Joseph Crackstone, at Nevermore. At present time, the Addamses visit Wednesday for parents' weekend at Nevermore. A family therapy session is cut short when Wednesday confronts her parents about the suspected murder. Meanwhile, Sheriff Galpin learns that the coroner has committed suicide after admitting to fabricating Gates's autopsy report. Galpin concludes that Gomez is guilty and arrests him. In prison, Gomez reveals to Wednesday that he was covering for Morticia, who actually killed Gates. Wednesday and Morticia dig up Gates's grave to find that he had been lethally poisoned before he could be killed, but are caught by police and arrested for the night. Later, they confront Mayor Walker who reveals that Garrett intended to poison the entire school due to his father's hate for outcasts. Mayor Walker agrees to release Gomez after admitting to covering up Gates's motive. Back at Nevermore, Weems reluctantly admits to covering up Rowan's death by means of shapeshifting in an effort to evade controversy at the school. | |||||
6 | "Quid Pro Woe" | Gandja Monteiro | April Blair | November 23, 2022 | |
Wednesday attempts to summon Goody, an old ancestor and fellow psychic who killed Crackstone. During a surprise birthday party, Wednesday has a vision of Goody who instructs her to seek out the Gates mansion. There, she witnesses Mayor Walker as he is leaving the building and sneaks into his car. After arriving back in town, Mayor Walker is run over and severely injured. Weems locks down the school and forbids Wednesday to leave campus. With Tyler and Enid's help, she escapes and returns to the Gates mansion. There, they discover that Laurel Gates, Garrett's younger sister, long believed to be dead, might still be alive. They find the severed bodyparts of the monster's victims in a cellar, but are forced to escape after being ambushed by the monster. Wednesday leads Galpin to the cellar, only to find it empty. At Nevermore, Wednesday convinces Weems not to expel her in order to be able to further pursue her investigation. At the hospital, an unknown figure kills Mayor Walker. | |||||
7 | "If You Don't Woe Me by Now" | James Marshall | Alfred Gough & Miles Millar and Matt Lambert | November 23, 2022 | |
At Mayor Walker's funeral, Wednesday notices a lurking figure and chases it into the forest. The figure is revealed to be Uncle Fester, who explains to Wednesday that the monster she has been investigating is a Hyde. Together, they retrieve a diary from the hidden library revealing that a Hyde must always have a master. Later, they track and follow Xavier, who they witness meeting up with Dr. Kinbott, Wednesday's therapist, in the forest. After returning from a date with Tyler, Wednesday finds her dorm ravaged, the diary stolen, and Thing gravely injured. Research into Laurel Gates reveals that she is both alive and the master of the Hyde. Wednesday initially suspects Dr. Kinbott, but she is killed by the Hyde. Police arrive to arrest Xavier, who Wednesday believes to be the creature. Wednesday meets with Tyler and kisses him but suddenly has a vision of him being the Hyde and runs off. | |||||
8 | "A Murder of Woes" | James Marshall | Alfred Gough & Miles Millar | November 23, 2022 | |
Wednesday and her classmates kidnap Tyler, and Wednesday starts torturing him to make him confess. Disagreeing with her methods, her classmates alert Weems, and Wednesday is arrested. At the police station, Tyler finally confesses to being the monster. Fed up with Wednesday's behavior, Weems expels her from Nevermore. Wednesday visits Eugene at the hospital, whose description of the figure he saw at the monster's cave matches Ms. Thornhill, a teacher at Nevermore. Weems, disguised as Tyler, and Wednesday get Thornhill to confess that she is Laurel Gates and manipulated Tyler into killing the victims as part of her scheme to resurrect Joseph Crackstone and wipe out all outcasts. However, Gates manages to kill Weems and subdue Wednesday. Using Wednesday's blood, Gates resurrects Crackstone and leaves Wednesday to die, but Goody appears to heal her. Enid, having transformed into her werewolf form, defeats Tyler in his Hyde form while Crackstone breaches Nevermore. With help from Bianca, Wednesday destroys Crackstone, and Eugene helps defeat Gates. Xavier is released from prison, Tyler is detained, and Wednesday departs Nevermore, which is closing for the remainder of the semester. |
During pre-production on the 1991 film, Tim Burton was approached to direct, but ended up passing on it due to scheduling conflicts with Batman and Batman Returns, resulting in Barry Sonnenfeld taking the job.[3][4] In March 2010, it was announced that Illumination Entertainment had acquired the underlying rights to the Addams Family drawings.[5] The film was planned to be a stop-motion animated film based on Charles Addams's original drawings. Burton was set to co-write, co-produce, and possibly direct the film.[6] In July 2013, it was reported that the film was cancelled,[7] which, according to Burton, was due to the studio favoring a computer-animated approach over the stop-motion technique.[8]
Showrunners Miles Millar and Alfred Gough started developing story ideas in 2019. They subsequently acquired the rights to the intellectual property before writing a pilot script, which they sent to Burton.[9] To their surprise, Burton immediately became interested upon receiving the script.[10] Commenting about his decision to join the project, Burton stated that he could relate to the titular character's worldview and that the script "spoke to me about how I felt in school and how you feel about your parents, how you feel as a person. It gave the Addams Family a different kind of reality. It was an interesting combination."[8] Millar stated that it was "very important" to the creative team not to emulate the prior films and 1964 television series.[10] Millar and Gough decided to make the juxtaposition of "outcasts" and "normies" as well as criticism of colonial Americans major themes in the series.[11]
In October 2020, Wednesday was initially announced as an unnamed Addams Family project being helmed by Burton. The series's production would be handled by MGM Television, with Burton as director. Gough and Millar would serve as showrunners, while Gough, Millar, and Burton would also be executive producers alongside Gail Berman, Jon Glickman, and Andrew Mittman.[12] In February 2021, Netflix gave the production a series order consisting of eight episodes.[13] In August 2021, Kayla Alpert was added as an executive producer and 1.21, Tee and Charles Addams Foundation, and Glickmania were also producing the series.[14] Deemed his "first real foray into television", Burton directed four out of the eight episodes,[10] with Gandja Monteiro and James Marshall directing the remaining episodes.[15] Burton brought on regular collaborator Colleen Atwood as costume designer.[10]
The creative team sought a Latina to play the role of Wednesday Addams in order to align with character Gomez Addams's heritage, an aspect of the character that was already worked into the series's script.[17] In May 2021, Jenna Ortega, who is of Mexican and Puerto Rican descent,[17] was cast in the role.[18] Millar stated that, upon their first Zoom call together, the creative team knew that "nobody else on this planet" was better suited to portray the character.[19] Ortega said that she was initially hesitant about joining the project due to her past work in teen-oriented Disney Channel shows.[20] In the beginning of August of that year, Luis Guzmán was cast to guest-star as Gomez Addams,[14] and Catherine Zeta-Jones was cast as Morticia Addams in an undisclosed capacity.[21] Later that month, Thora Birch, Riki Lindhome, Jamie McShane, Hunter Doohan, Georgie Farmer, Moosa Mostafa, Emma Myers, Naomi J. Ogawa, Joy Sunday, and Percy Hynes White were announced to be cast as series regulars.[22] Myers initially auditioned for the titular role before she was cast as Wednesday's roommate Enid.[23]
In September, Gwendoline Christie and Victor Dorobantu were added to the cast in starring roles while Isaac Ordonez, George Burcea, Tommie Earl Jenkins, Iman Marson, William Houston, Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo, Oliver Watson, Calum Ross, and Johnna Dias Watson were cast in recurring roles.[24] In December 2021, Birch left the series, leaving the status of her character, dorm mother Tamara Novak, unclear.[25] In March 2022, it was announced that Christina Ricci, who played Wednesday Addams in the 1991 film and its 1993 sequel, was cast as a series regular, replacing Birch in a similar role.[26] Commenting on her casting, Ricci stated, "I was really flattered to be asked and to be asked by Tim [Burton]",[16] with whom she had previously collaborated on the 1999 film Sleepy Hollow.[27] Ricci was almost unable to accept the role due to possible scheduling conflicts with Showtime series Yellowjackets.[17] In October, a trailer revealed Fred Armisen to be portraying Uncle Fester, and Ricci's role was confirmed as Marilyn Thornhill.[28]
Filming took place between September 2021 and March 2022 in the Southern Carpathian town of Bușteni, Romania.[29][30] Filming locations included Cantacuzino Castle, serving as the setting for the fictional Nevermore Academy, Politehnica University of Bucharest, Sinaia railway station, the Bucharest Botanical Garden, Monteoru House, and the historic Olga Greceanu Mansion in Dâmbovița County, standing in for the Gates mansion.[31] Exterior shots of Cantacuzino Castle were supplemented with CGI.[32] Other settings, including the entire town of Jericho, were constructed at Buftea Studios.[31][33] Production designer Mark Scruton based his set design primarily on Charles Addams's original cartoons and drew inspiration from Burton-directed films such as Beetlejuice and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.[34] Ortega called her work on the series "very stressful and confusing" and "the most overwhelming job I've ever had" due to the production's fast-tracked shooting schedule.[35]
To prepare for her role, Ortega learned to play cello and took canoeing, fencing, archery, and German lessons.[19] According to actress Joy Sunday, the canoeing lessons were especially strenuous, involving the entire cast and some dozen stuntmen racing each other for an hour daily, with days starting as early as 5:30 am.[36] Ortega avoided talking to Ricci about playing the character during filming in order to achieve her own unique rendition of the role.[37] She choreographed her dance to the Cramps' "Goo Goo Muck" herself, taking inspiration from Siouxsie Sioux, Bob Fosse, and goth dance club footage from the 1980s.[38][39] Scenes featuring Thing, played by Romanian magician Victor Dorobantu, were achieved using a mixture of practical and special effects; Dorobantu wore a blue chroma-key bodysuit that would be edited out in post-production, leaving only his hand exposed. To create the illusion of a severed hand, a prosthetic stump was applied to Dorobantu's hand.[40]
In December 2021, it was reported that longtime Burton collaborator Danny Elfman joined the series to compose the original theme[41] and co-compose its score with Chris Bacon.[15] The score features a selection of the series's original score composed by Elfman and Bacon as well as several pop songs, including cello renditions of "Paint It Black" by the Rolling Stones, "Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica, and "Physical" by Dua Lipa.[42][43] The score also incorporates a number of classical works, including The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi, Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto, The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns, Gnossienne No. 1 by Erik Satie, and "Flight of the Bumblebee" by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.[44]
Led by two singles, "Devious Plan" and "Wednesday on the Case",[45] Wednesday's 48-track soundtrack was released by Lakeshore Records on November 23, 2022,[42] and a four-track extended play featuring covers of classical and pop songs were released on November 30.[44] In his review of the series, Tony Sokol of Den of Geek called the score "a major character, not only thematically, but as an emotional delivery system", making "the chills creepier, the jokes funnier, and the tingles tangible".[46] Linda Codega of Gizmodo called the cello segments "memorable" and the score "occasionally-magnificent".[47] Writing for IGN, Amelia Emberwing described the combination of Elfman's score with Burton's material as "[going] together like peanut butter and jelly" and the score overall as "a stunner".[48]
A first teaser trailer for Wednesday was released on August 17, 2022,[49] followed by a full trailer on October 9[50] and the unveiling of the series's opening sequence on November 8.[51] Wednesday premiered on November 16, 2022, at Hollywood Legion Theater in Los Angeles.[52][53] Its eight episodes were released on Netflix on November 23, 2022.[54] In December 2022, Netflix released a promotional video to its Twitter account depicting Thing, a sentient disembodied hand appearing in the series, roaming the streets of New York City and capturing passersby's reactions.[55]
According to data from users of TV Time collected by Whip Media, Wednesday had the second-most pre-release followers of any Netflix original series on the platform, behind only The Witcher;[56] it ultimately debuted at number one on Netflix in 83 countries.[57] The series holds the record of most hours viewed in a week for an English-language Netflix series with a total 341.2 million hours watched in its first week of release, amounting to more than 50 million households, and passing prior record holder Stranger Things 4's 335.01 million hours.[58] Nielsen Media Research reported a combined watch time of 6 billion minutes within its first week of release, making it the second-biggest streaming week ever recorded by the firm.[59] Three weeks after its release, it became the second-most watched English-language Netflix series in the history of the platform, reaching an estimated 150 million households and totaling 1.02 billion viewing hours.[60] Jacob Stolworthy of The Independent called the series's popularity "unprecedented" and suggested that it could jumpstart development of several other spin-off television series.[61]
The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 72% approval rating and an average rating of 6.8/10, based on 87 reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "Wednesday isn't exactly full of woe for viewers, but without Jenna Ortega in the lead, this Addams Family-adjacent series might as well be another CW drama."[62] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 66 out of 100 based on 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[63]
Ed Power of The Daily Telegraph gave Wednesday four out of five stars and called it "an addictively rococo romp that unfolds like a cross between Euphoria and Hotel Transylvania".[64] John Anderson of The Wall Street Journal commended Ortega's "charismatic performance" and called the series "often delightful, despite its deliberate darkness".[65] In his "B"-review for The Detroit News, Tom Long deemed the series visually appealing and described Ortega's deadpan as "just as elastic as it needed to be" and her performance overall as "consistently [pushing] outside the caricature enough to keep things lively".[66] Writing for RogerEbert.com, Cristina Escobar similarly praised Ortega's deadpan humor and commended the series's "satisfactory" ending.[67] While finding that the series would not be "what real fans of Charles Addams and his characters are looking for", Mike Hale of The New York Times called the series "tolerable" despite "satisfying only on the level of formulaic teenage romance and mystery" and compared it to the Harry Potter franchise.[68] Commenting on its tone, Jesse Hassenger of TheWrap described the four episodes directed by Burton as feeling more like Veronica Mars than Sleepy Hollow.[69] Nick Hilton of The Independent gave the series two out of five stars and criticized the series's tone as "relentlessly quippy Gen Z" and its performances as "more two-dimensional than the New Yorker comic strip in which the characters first appeared".[70]
Wednesday was ranked the seventh best TV show of 2022 by PopBuzz.[71] BuzzFeed News included the series in its unranked list of "16 Great TV Shows From 2022".[72] Meanwhile, Collider named it one of the best new TV shows of the year.[73]
Award | Year | Category | Recipient(s) | Result | Ref. |
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Golden Globe Awards | 2023 | Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy | Wednesday | Pending | [74] |
Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy | Jenna Ortega | Pending |
On possible future seasons, Gough and Millar commented in an interview with Variety, "when we sit down to create a show, it's looking at multiple seasons, ideally. That's never expected, but that's the anticipation that hopefully the show is successful." They further stated that they had "a pretty clear runway" of how future seasons could unfold.[75] Preparation for a second season commenced in December 2022, following Amazon's acquisition of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.[76]
Following the release of Wednesday, Wednesday Addams's dance from the series and its fan recreations to Lady Gaga's song "Bloody Mary" went viral on video sharing service TikTok,[77] with Kim Kardashian, Amelia Dimoldenberg, Marina Diamandis, and Gaga herself also participating in the trend.[78][79] This resulted in a large increase in plays of the song on Spotify[80] and on-demand streams in the United States, surging by 415 percent in the week after the series's release.[81] In December 2022, "Bloody Mary" was sent to French radio as a single, 11 years after the release of Born This Way, the album it was featured on.[82] The 1981 song "Goo Goo Muck" by the Cramps, which plays during the original dance scene in the fourth episode of the series, also saw a surge in popularity. According to Billboard, on-demand streams of the song in the United States increased from 2,500 to over 134,000,[83] and Spotify streams increased by 9,500 percent since the series was released.[84] Janelle Zara of The Guardian stated that the viral dance trend "may have single-handedly revived Gothic subculture for Gen Z".[85]
At the same time, Illumination has scrapped a Tim Burton-helmed, stop-motion "The Addams Family".
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