The Munsters: Rob Zombie Confirms Reboot Won’t Be “Dirty, Violent, and Nasty”

After revealing that his upcoming revival of The Munsters will carry a PG rating, House of 1,000 Corpses director Rob Zombie took to social media to reassure fans that the movie will not carry the signature look and tone that has shaped his cinematic outings before now. Promising that the movie will not be “dirty, violent, and nasty,” Zombie suggested that the film will maintain the tone from previous versions of The Munsters, a horror-comedy that started as a sitcom in 1964. It had an initial run of 70 episodes over two seasons, and was followed by numerous TV movies, as well as a few attempts to reboot it.

The series centers on a family of monsters who live in the everyday world. If that feels like The Addams Family to you, there are similarities…but the key difference is that The Munsters has a lighter touch, and the characters themselves are less acutely aware of how out of sync with the mainstream they are.

Munsters fans had previously expressed concern that the characters would be rendered unrecognizable, or that the movie would be transformed into a redneck gore-fest, after Zombie was announced. His distinctive style as a director overtook the style and tone of the Halloween franchise when he rebooted that, leading to some of the most polarizing movies in that long-running franchise.

You can see Zombie’s post below.

Funny enough, as the press started to pick up on the news, Zombie shared a second post, this time a screenshot of the Variety article, with the caption “It’s official if it’s in Variety.”

One of the film’s stars, Daniel Roebuck, recently said that Zombie was perfect for the property, in spite of concerns that viewers had.

“I really hope audiences walk away feeling entertained and laughing,” Roebuck said. “That’s all we really hope for making any movie, well, unless it’s a drama. If all goes well and people really like, maybe we’ll get the chance to do it again. I just hope people realize that they’ll have a whole new version of The Munsters that can live and co-exist side-by-side with the original version of The Munsters. No one wants to replace it, we all love it so much. We just want to shine a spotlight on it with our approach which I think is the best way to look at it.”  

Previously confirmed cast members for Zombie’s version of The Munsters include a host of his former collaborators with Jeff Daniel Phillips (The Lords of Salem, Halloween II) as Herman Munster, Daniel Roebuck (3 From Hell, 31) as Grandpa Munster, and Sherri Moon Zombie as Lily Munster. Fans can also expect Richard Brake (31, 3 from Hell) as Dr. Henry Augustus Wolfgang and Sylvester McCoy (Doctor Who) as Igor.