Tim Burton Remaining Firmly Within Comfort Zone, Directing 3D Stop-Motion Version Of ‘The Addams Family’

Oh, for heaven’s sake. Look, we get that artists have particular obsessions that they return to throughout their career; Hitchcock’s blondes, Scorsese’s Catholicism, Tarantino’s VHS collection. But all those filmmakers tempered this by broadening their subject matter, trying other things. Tim Burton is not one of them. “Alice in Wonderland” may be on course to be the most successful film of his career, but it’s also almost certainly the worst (yes, including “Planet of the Apes”); inert, lifeless filmmaking. He’s in pre-production on a feature-length remake of his short film “Frankenweenie,” set to go before cameras in London any day now, but he’s already lining up another 3D stop-motion animation, based on subject matter remarkably similar to most of his output.

Deadline report that Burton will direct a new animated version of “The Addams Family” for Illumination Entertainment (“Despicable Me”), Universal’s new animation arm. Like “Frankenweenie,” it’ll be 3D stop motion animation, and the project will have no links to either the early 1990s Barry Sonnenfeld films (thank baby Jesus), or the upcoming Broadway musical starring Nathan Lane. Burton is “expected to provide much of the visual look of the film himself.” And therein, as the saying goes, lies the rub.

“Alice” showed a filmmaker fossilized in his own style of filmmaking, and taking on the dark, goth-y world created by Charles Addams, seems to provide absolutely no opportunity for the filmmaker to grow. The stated intention is “to go back to the litany of Addams illustrations, that displayed a sharper wit than could be placed into a 60s family TV series,” which at least sounds promising, but we’re very skeptical that Burton will bring anything to this that we haven’t seen from him half-a-dozen times before.

No writer’s currently attached, but we imagine either Linda Woolverton or John August will get a phone call in the immediate future, and presumably the plot will involve Gomez Addams being killed off in the first reel, so that Burton can shoehorn his usual daddy issues in. Or it’ll be exactly like this…

Also, note, this isn’t Burton’s first brush with “The Addam’s Family.” According to the New York Times, Burton (and Terry Gilliam), both turned down the 1991 film produced by Scott Rudin and eventually directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. Was a wise choice then as that film is a Disney-like cartoon, but isn’t that essentially what Burton’s work has metamorphosed into anyhow?

Update: MTV reached out to Burton’s publicists and they denied the story saying, “There is no truth to the story. Tim has not lined up any of his upcoming projects.” But that reads strange to us and sounds like typical publicist denial that should read, “Tim hasn’t decided what he’s doing next, therefore calling one of his legitimate options fact, is untrue.” At least that’s our take on it.