‘Wednesday’ Uncle Fester Spinoff in the Works at Netflix

Netflix is looking to add another branch to its Addams Family tree.

The streamer is in the early stages of development on a spinoff of Wednesday. The potential series would focus on Uncle Fester, Wednesday’s (Jenna Ortega) paternal uncle, played by Fred Armisen.

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That a spinoff would be in the offing is no surprise, given the runaway success of Wednesday, which premiered in November 2022 and became Netflix’s biggest series to date in terms of streaming “views” (calculated by dividing a movie or show’s total viewing time by its running time). It was renewed for a second season in January.

Amazon MGM Studios, which produces the series and owns rights to the characters, is fully on board as well, per Bloomberg (which first reported development of the spinoff).

Wednesday creators and showrunners Al Gough and Miles Millar had spinoff ideas brewing even before the series debuted. Gough told The Hollywood Reporter’s TV’s Top 5 podcast ahead of the premiere that “we’ve definitely talked about it with Netflix.

“When you create a world like this, the intention is any one of these characters could be the lead in their own show,” Gough said. “Certainly it’s cast that way, when you have Fred Armisen, when you have Catherine Zeta-Jones, when you have Luis Guzman. It’s certainly something we’ve discussed and would very much like to, in success, really branch out this world beyond just Wednesday.”

Gough and Millar executive produced season one of Wednesday with Tim Burton (who directed half of season one), Steve Stark, Andrew Mittman, Gail Berman, Kayla Alpert, Jonathan Glickman, Tommy Harper, Kevin Lafferty and Kevin Miserocchi. Ortega will be a producer on the second season.

Dec. 18, 12:15 p.m. An earlier version of this story misstated Jenna Ortega’s off-camera position on Wednesday.

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