Jenna Ortega will play a new take on Wednesday Addams in Wednesday, a new series coming to Netflix this fall. Developed in collaboration with Tim Burton, who makes his series directorial debut by helming four of the show's eight episodes, Wednesday serves as a bit of a reimagining of The Addams Family with a specific focus on Wednesday Addams. On Tuesday, Netflix and Vanity Fair unveiled an official image of the family as seen in the series.

Series showrunners Miles Millar and Alfred Gough teased what Wednesday will be like. It was explained that they did not approach this project looking at it as a reboot or remake of The Addams Family. The idea was to simply tell a Tim Burton story that spans quite a bit longer than your average film, and this one just so happens to feature The Addams Family characters. As Millar puts it:

"The ambition of the show was to make it an eight-hour Tim Burton movie."

The showrunners also say that Burton was the "Mount Everest of directors" on their wish list for the project after he famously passed on directing the original live-action feature film. It apparently took just three days for Burton to get back in touch after checking out the pilot script, and they were happy to hear that he was stoked about the idea. Gough said:

“He was interested in where it was going, the mystery of the show. He had a lot of questions about the previous television work we’d done, like how we were able to achieve it. He really loved that you had time to be with Wednesday and explore the character and you didn’t have to, you know, wrap things up in an hour and 45 minutes.”

Related: The Munsters & Wednesday: Why Their Release Dates Are Perfect

Wednesday is a Show About Family

Puggsley Wednesday
Netflix

The new Addams Family as seen in Wednesday consists of Jenna Ortega as Wednesday, Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia, Luis Guzman, as Gomez, and Isaac Ordonez as Pugsley. Millar also spoke about the family dynamics of the series and the relationship between Pugsley and Wednesday. While Wednesday does tend to carry out her own methods of "torture" on her brother, she is also defensive, refusing to let school bullies or anyone else treat him that way.

"She’s allowed to torture him. Nobody else is. That’s the difference. She will defend him to the end against bullies or anything else, but she has license to do what she wants. She’s very protective of him in a very Wednesday way. Every family is weird, and this one happens to be extremely weird, but they love each other. And that’s ultimately what it’s about: They always have each other’s backs, and it’s unconditional love.”

Wednesday comes to Netflix this fall, just in time for Halloween. A specific release date has yet to be announced for the new series, but we also know that Rob Zombie's The Munsters will be hitting the streaming platform around the same time.