Date: 10th August 2021

Tim Burton's 'Wednesday' Casts Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Addams.


Oscar-winner Catherine Zeta-Jones will play Morticia Addams opposite Luis Guzman as Gomez in Tim Burton's Addams Family reboot series Wednesday.

"Our Addams family is expanding," the streaming service announced on Twitter. "Catherine Zeta-Jones will step into the iconic silhouette of Morticia Addams while Luis Guzmán will bring to life the debonair Gomez Addams in the upcoming TV series Wednesday, starring Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams and directed by Tim Burton."

Zeta-Jones and Guzmán follow in the footsteps of Charlize Theron, Oscar Isaac, Raul Julia, Anjelica Huston, Tim Curry, Daryl Hannah, John Astin and Carolyn Jones, who've all played the perfectly ghoulish couple in different projects.

Netflix has already committed to an eight-episode order of Wednesday, although it's unclear when filming is slated to begin. Moving the story forward by focusing on an older Wednesday after she leaves the family mansion to attend Nevermore Academy. Her attempts to "master her emerging psychic ability, thwart a monstrous killing spree that has terrorized the local town, and solve the supernatural mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago - all while navigating her new and very tangled relationships at Nevermore."

Catherine Zeta-Jones marks the latest in series of actresses to play Morticia Addams. She was originally portrayed by Carolyn Jones in the TV series adaptation of The Addams Family in the 1960s. Anjelica Huston famously took over the role for a pair of Addams Family movies in the 1990s opposite Raul Julia as Gomez. Daryl Hannah played another live-action version of Morticia in 1998's Addams Family Reunion. Charlize Theron voices Morticia in the recent animated Addams Family movie, a role she'll reprise in The Addams Family 2 in October.

Tim Burton will direct all eight episodes of Wednesday, which feels very much in line with the aesthetic he has carved out for himself in his thirty-plus year career, almost to the point where his involvement here feels like self-parody. Even with the show’s slightly different approach to this story - it follows Wednesday as she heads off to Nevermore Academy instead of primarily focusing on the antics of the entire Addams family - this very much feels like familiar ground for the director, who only five years ago directed Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.

Source: Press Release