The Munsters Getting Horror Reboot TV Series From Producer James Wan
The Munsters horror series "lives and breathes within the Universal Monsterverse."
The Munsters are returning to 1313 Mocking Bird Lane.
Television's most frightful family is being brought back from the dead by Universal Studio Group, the unit that consists of Universal Television (behind the original Munsters), Universal Content Productions (the Chucky and Ted TV series), and Universal International Studios. According to Variety, which first reported the news, the Munsters reboot is in the works under the title 1313 and is a horror series that "lives and breathes within the Universal Monsterverse."
James Wan — the visionary filmmaker behind the Saw and Conjuring franchises whose Atomic Monster banner recently merged with the Universal-based Blumhouse — developed the series with Pet Sematary: Bloodlines writer-director Lindsey Anderson Beer and Wan's Malignant co-writer and executive producer Ingrid Bisu. Anderson Beer will serve as showrunner and executive producer for Lab Brew, with Wan, Michael Clear (M3GAN), and Rob Hackett (Swamp Thing) executive producing for Atomic Monster; Bisu is co-executive producer and Universal's UCP is the producing studio.
Universal Television tried to resurrect The Munsters as a darker, updated version in the 2012 pilot Mockingbird Lane, but the potential show from producer Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies) was not picked up to series. The 39-minute pilot starred Jerry O'Connell as a human-looking Herman Munster, Portia de Rossi as the vampiress Lily Munster, Mason Cook as wolfboy Eddie Munster, Charity Wakefield as Lily's human niece Marilyn, and Eddie Izzard as the blood-sucking Grandpa.
Universal 1414 Entertainment, Universal's direct-to-video label, rebooted The Munsters again in 2022 with Rob Zombie (Halloween and Halloween II) writing and directing the low-budget feature for streaming.
The original Munsters TV series aired 70 episodes across two seasons on CBS and starred Fred Gwynne as Herman, Yvonne De Carlo as Lily, Al Lewis as Grandpa, Butch Patrick as Eddie, and Beverly Owen and Pat Priest as Marilyn. A full-length feature film, Munster, Go Home!, followed in 1966, as did a 1973 animated special and TV movies in 1981, 1995, and 1996. A three-season sequel series, The Munsters Today, aired between 1988 and 1991 and starred John Schuck, Lee Meriweather, Jason Marsden, Hilary Van Dyke, and Howard Morton in the title roles.
