Given their similarly dark gothic sensibilities, it's surprising that director Tim Burton hasn't had much to do with the weird world of Charles Addams before, but that may soon change: The guy behind the hit Alice in Wonderland is reportedly making a new 3-D stop-motion-animated version of The Addams Family.
That's the news on Deadline Hollywood. And the good news is that Burton's film may go back to Addams' original cartoons and not rely on the beloved 1960s TV series or Barry Sonnenfeld's 1990s movies:
Illumination Entertainment, the Universal-based family film unit headed by Chris Meledandri, has acquired the underlying rights of the Addams drawings, once a staple of The New Yorker magazine.
Other than being inspired by the same source material, the animated feature is unrelated to previous incarnations of Addams' work, the 60s TV series, the two `90s feature film comedies that Barry Sonnenfeld directed with Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston, or the Broadway musical opening this spring with Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth in the starring roles. ...
His intention is to go back to the litany of Addams illustrations that displayed a sharper wit than could be place into a 60s family TV series.
Burton is no stranger to stop-motion animation, as illustrated by his Corpse Bride and Henry Selick's The Nightmare Before Christmas, which Burton produced.
Maybe we'll finally get a taste of the real misanthropic ghoulishness of Addams' original cartoons! Who's with us?
