"Wednesday" Spinoff in Works at Netflix

While fans waits the highly-anticipated Season 2 of the Netflix breakout hit series “Wednesday”, the latest adaptation of the “Addams Family” franchise, the streamer is already eyeing a way to expand that universe. 

Netflix and producer MGM Television are in the early stages of development on a spinoff of the series focused on Uncle Fester, Wednesday’s (Jenna Ortega) paternal uncle, played by Fred Armisen.

Armisen's casting came as a surprise when it was first revealed in October 2022 during a trailer teaser drop. He joined the Addams family that also included Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Addams, Luis Guzmán as Gomez Addams, and Isaac Ordonez as Pugsley Addams.

Armisen first rose to prominence via his sketch comedy roles in “Saturday Night Live” and “Portlandia”; in recent years his TV appearances have included “Barry”, “History of the World, Part II”, “Unstable”, “What We Do in the Shadows” ,“The Kids in the Hall”, “Our Flag Means Death”, “Schmigadoon”, “Moonbase 8”, and “Shrull”. He also co-created and starred in “Los Espookys.”

Uncle Fester was played by Jackie Coogan in the original “Addams Family” series and later by Christopher Lloyd in the two movies in 1991 and 1993.

Armisen appeared in “Wednesday” Episode 7, “If You Don’t Woe Me by Now.” He talked in a Netflix piece on the series, about being cast: “It doesn’t happen that often, but it was a real case of, ‘Oh, I’m the guy for this. This is something that I would really love to do.’ ”

Alfred Gough & Miles Millar are showrunners and executive producers of “Wednesday”, while Tim Burton is director/EP. Other EPs include Steve Stark, Andrew Mittman (1.21 Entertainment), Kevin Miserocchi (Tee and Charles Addams Foundation), Kayla Alpert, Jonathan Glickman (Glickmania), Gail Berman, Tommy Harper and Kevin Lafferty.

“Wednesday” also stars Gwendoline Christie (Principal Larissa Weems), Jamie McShane (Sheriff Galpin), Percy Hynes White (Xavier Thorpe), Hunter Doohan (Tyler Galpin), Emma Myers (Enid Sinclair), Joy Sunday (Bianca Barclay), Naomi J Ogawa (Yoko Tanaka), Moosa Mostafa (Eugene Ottinger), Georgie Farmer (Ajax Petropolus), Riki Lindhome (Dr. Valerie Kinbott), and Christina Ricci (Marilyn Thornhill).

“Wednesday” is moving production from Romania to Ireland for Season 2, and is tentatively scheduled to start shooting in April. 

The eight-episode first season, which originally debuted last November on Netflix, was shot in Romania from September 2021 to March 2022. After breaking multiple streaming series records, including most hours viewed for an English language series in its first week with over 341 million hours, the series was renewed for Season 2 in January.