Catherine Zeta-Jones is our next Morticia Addams in Tim Burton's Wednesday series at Netflix. Just days after it was reported that actor Luis Guzmán had been cast to play the Addams family patriarch Gomez, Variety now reports that Zeta-Jones will co-star as Morticia in the next live-action incarnation of the character. The upcoming Addams Family reboot series will also star Jenna Ortega in the lead role as Wednesday Addams.
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.
An Academy Award winner, Zeta-Jones previously won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in Chicago. She has also starred in movies like Traffic, Intolerable Cruelty, The Mask of Zorro, Entrapment, Ocean's Twelve, Red 2, and Dad's Army. More recently, she has been impressing critics with her roles on the small screen, which includes acclaimed roles in the miniseries Feud: Bette & Joan for FX, Queen America for Facebook Watch, and Prodigal Son for Fox.
Al Gough and Miles Millar created Wednesday for Netflix. Tim Burton directs the series, marking his directorial debut on the small screen, while Gough and Millar serve as series showrunners. Burton, Gough, and Millar are executive producing alongside Steve Stark, Andrew Mittman for 1.21, Kevin Miserocchi of the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation, Kayla Alpert, Jonathan Glickman for Glickmania, and Gail Berman. Mittman, Berman, and Miserocchi also served as executive producers on the 2019 animated movie. MGM TV is producing.
The recent casting news has some longtime fans of The Addams Family satisfied as they seem to more closely resemble the original illustrated members of the family. Created by cartoonist Charles Addams, The Addams Family first debuted as a comic strip in 1938. There have since been a plethora of TV shows and movies based on the series and content that has branched out into other mediums like books and video games.
Wednesday doesn't have an official release date on Netflix yet set, but as pre-production is moving along swimmingly, filming can't be too far away. We'll likely be hearing about more casting announcements in the near future following the casting of Wednesday Addams and her two parents. This news comes to us from Variety.