Tim Burton Addams Family Live-Action Show in Development With Smallville Producers

After a successful and animated outing on the big screen in 2019, TV’s kookiest family is returning to our living rooms. The Addams Family is getting a television reboot in the near future, with an all-star creative team set to bring the iconic group to life once again. Beetlejuice and Batman director Tim Burton is developing the rebooted series and serving as executive producer, working alongside the duo of Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, who are going to serve as head writers and showrunners. Gough and Millar are best known for creating and producing the hit DC series Smallville.

According to Deadline, who first reported the news, Burton may be taking an even bigger role aside from his executive producing duties. The filmmaker is reportedly in negotiations to direct all of the episodes of the Addams Family as well. Gough and Miller will also serve as executive producers.

The series is being financed by MGM TV, which makes sense as MGM is the company that controls the franchise IP. As for where the series will actually land, that remains up in the air. Deadline reports that the project currently has multiple networks and streaming services bidding on the project, including Netflix, which has been singled out as one of the front-runners.

Like the 2019 animated film, this take on The Addams Family will be set in the present day, with Wednesday Addams acting as the lead character. The series would be told from Wednesday’s perspective and show what the world would look like to her if she were here in 2020.

Cartoonist Charles Addams created The Addams Family back in 1938, and it has appeared on screens both big and small on numerous occasions. The feature film reboot starring Anjelica Huston from the early 1990s remains a favorite amongst fans.

MGM’s animated version of The Addams Family was released in theaters in 2019 and made enough of a splash at the box office to warrant the ordering of a sequel, which hits theaters in 2021. When the follow-up film was first announced, directors Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon talked with ComicBook.com about how they were approaching the second outing of the series.

“With any sequel like that you’ve got to move the characters forward and try and explore some new territory with them,” Tiernan told us. “So you know there’s no point in just regurgitating the same stuff no matter how funny it might be. So obviously we can’t say too much about it, but that’s something that we will be doing. We laid the groundwork with this movie, especially for people who weren’t familiar with the Addams Family. Because of course, has been over 20 years since the last major movie with the Addams’, so there are a lot of younger [viewers], and especially younger generation who didn’t know who these characters were at all. So we had to establish that in the first movie, and sort of reintroduce the characters as well as make sure that long time Addams fans recognize that they love the characters. So we did that, we feel successfully, in the current movie. And so the next step is to know well, how can we go bigger or better with these characters? So that’s basically what we’ll do soon, is develop and trace.”

Are you looking forward to Tim Burton’s take on The Addams Family? Where do you think the show will land? Let us know in the comments!