“Wednesday” on Netflix: Tim Burton explains the differences between his series and “The Crazy Addams”

Tim Burton grew up feeling part of the gloomy Addams Family but her favorite was the blunt daughter, Wednesday (or Merlina as she is known in Latin America), to whom she has dedicated her first series: “She was an excluded among excluded. And that’s how I felt,” said the director at the “Comics & Games” Fair in the Italian town of Lucca (north), during a presentation of the production that will arrive on Netflix on November 23.

“It’s funny because Wednesday goes to an outcast school, but she’s an outcast among the outcasts. And this is how I felt, that part really challenges me because it is how I felt at my school, with my parents or other people, ”she acknowledged in a meeting with her followers at the Teatro del Giglio in Lucca.

The director of “Beetlejuice” (1988), “Scissorhands” (1990) or “Corpse Bride” (2005) returns to the darkness that made him famous, this time making his debut in the world of series with her own version of the taciturn Merlina on the streaming platform.

And the venue for the presentation was the “Comics&Games” Fair in Lucca, a peaceful walled town in the Italian Tuscany that in recent years has become a capital of the cartoon genre in the world and that has received him in style.

“Wednesday” in eight episodes delves into the life of this dark young woman (Jeena Ortega) forced to deal with a series of mysteries and murders while studying at Nevermore Academy and, worse, socializing with her classmates. class.

Differences with “The crazy Addams”

“I grew up watching the Addams Family, I loved both the series and the cartoons and they were a real inspiration for me, but the character of Merlina… I feel like her since I was a teenager,” the filmmaker acknowledged.

And he cut short, provoking a general laugh: “I understand the character very well because I had mental problems for half my life.”

The series will naturally focus on the acid daughter, but the rest of the members of the original family devised by Charles Addams in 1938 will not be missing, starting with the mother, the iconic Morticia, played by Catherine Zeta-Jones, or her elegant husband Gómez, to which Luis Guzman gives life.

And of course “Thing” will not be missing either, but this time in the form of a “more vivid” hand. Because time has passed, now the protagonist is no longer so young.

The world imagined by Burton is equally mysterious and gloomy, but perhaps increases its doses of uncertainty with the echoes of a very present reality, such as social networks and their effects, not always positive, in schools on half the planet.

“I’m afraid of the internet because every time I go looking for something I end up in a black hole with funny cat videos,” he alleged.

The American filmmaker thus immerses himself in a format, that of the series, which few can resist but although it has been “a great pleasure”, especially for being able to work at a slower pace, his “first love” is still cinema, movies.

From cinema to TV

And he will continue to work on it, he promised, to add to a list of films loved by the public, such as “The Legend of the Headless Horseman” (1999), “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (2005) or “Alice in Wonderland” ( 2010).

In this sense, curiously, comics inspire him less despite the fact that he owes some of the great films of his gothic filmography to them, such as the unforgettable “Batman” (1989) by Bob Kane.

“Of course I love all forms of art but I always had trouble reading comics because I never knew which panel to read. I have a kind of dyslexic mind, ”she ironized.

After all, the reason for the success of the mythical Addams Family is that everyone is somehow weird or has some weird relatives and friends. He too and that is why he has set out to leave his unmistakable mark on a classic… once again.

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