Tim Burton to direct Wednesday Addams series for Netflix

Tim Burton is directing a Netflix live-action series featuring Wednesday Addams, the streaming giant said (Matt Crossick/PA)

Tim Burton will direct a Netflix live-action series featuring Wednesday Addams, the streaming giant said.

Based on the character originally created by cartoonist Charles Addams, Wednesday is described as a “coming-of-age comedy” set during the death-obsessed youngster’s school years.

Tim Burton is bringing Wednesday Addams to Netflix in a live-action coming-of-age series!

Burton will also make his TV directorial debut on the sleuthing, supernaturally infused mystery that follows Wednesday as a student at Nevermore Academy pic.twitter.com/8ei3wIUrxq

— Netflix (@netflix) February 17, 2021

Acclaimed filmmaker Burton – known for his affinity with the bizarre and macabre – will direct while Al Gough and Miles Millar will serve as executive producers.

Teddy Biaselli, Netflix’s director of original series, said: “The upcoming eight-episode series is a sleuthing, supernaturally infused mystery charting Wednesday’s years as a student at the peculiar Nevermore Academy.”

Viewers will see Wednesday attempting “to master her emerging psychic ability, thwart a monstrous killing spree that has terrorised the local town and solve the supernatural mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago,” Biaselli added.

Wednesday was first introduced – though without a name – in Addams’ original 1938 cartoons for the New Yorker.

She and the rest of her family – including father Gomez and mother Morticia – were given names for the classic 1964 TV series.

Christina Ricci played Wednesday in 1991 film The Addams Family and its 1993 sequel.

A 2019 animated film version featured Chloe Grace Moretz as the voice of Wednesday.