Tim Burton’s Dumbo, most of which were lukewarmly received.
Netflix’s Wednesday will be Burton’s first jump into helming a television series, putting his own spin on the classic horror-comedy Addams Family series. Burton’s live-action show will focus on the death-obsessed daughter Wednesday Addams, who will solve mysteries using her psychic ability. Wednesday is already highly anticipated with a star-studded cast g on, and it will be held to high standards in comparison to the 1960s series and 1990s Addams Family films.
While Wednesday’s reception could mark a revival of Burton’s career following a disappointing slate of films, it can also redeem his weak adaptation of Dark Shadows starring Johnny Depp. Dark Shadows, based on a ‘60s gothic TV soap, was Tim Burton’s take on a property less beloved, but similar to The Addams Family, though he chose to use a darker tone than the latter, having trouble balancing whether Dark Shadows was a drama or comedy. The Addams Family and Dark Shadows share similar underlying themes and gothic tones, so a successful Wednesday series could prove Burton has what it takes to master macabre entertainment fit for the whole family.
Dark Shadows follows a vampire freed from his burial after a McDonald’s is built atop the tomb, plunging the 18th-century creature into the suburbia of modern-day, much like The Addams Family in the ‘90s films. Both projects are comedies steeped in a gothic horror tone - likened to the feel of the Universal classics Frankenstein and Dracula - with a happy, albeit creepy, family being ostracized by modern society. While The Addams Family is so well-regarded for its family dynamic, Dark Shadows fell flat with its intra-familial jokes and a very inconsistent tone. At the time Dark Shadows was released, many critics pointed out how it felt less like a revival than a parody of the original, focusing more on the campy jokes of Barnabus’s culture shock than the fun of a supernatural, gothic family.
If anything, ‘60s horror-comedy series like The Addams Family and Burton’s Edward Scissorhands, so using the same formula - and actor - for Dark Shadows was unnecessary and apt to be seen as inferior. Had the helmer focused more on the fun of familial dynamics that made shows like Addams Family so enjoyable rather than the shared miserableness of the Collins family, Dark Shadows may have worked much better. While Wednesday will focus more on one character than the entire family, Tim Burton can still use the Addams family’s strange relationship to make up for the inconsistencies seen with Dark Shadows.