FILM : NETFLIX'S : -'WEDNESDAY ADDAMS'- NEWS-HITS

 

'Wednesday' - Netflix's new hit. Tim Burton's series is one the five most successful OTT shows on streaming giant.

Bonn : Wednesday Addams [played by Jenna Ortega] never laughs - and being nice isn't her thing either. She is allergic to colours, which is why she only wears black.

Her new roommate, a cute girl with blonde hair and a penchant for pink, wants to know what happens if she wears colours.

''I break out into hives and then the flesh peels off the bones,'' Wednesday replies with a piercing look. Their differences don't stop the two roommates from becoming friends, though.

In the Netflix series Wednesday, the girls attend Nevermore Academy, a boarding school for children and teenagers with special powers - Wednesday and her peers must watch out for vampires, werewolves and others scary creatures, while monsters roam the surrounding woods.

As if all of that wasn't enough, the nearby town of Jericho is rocked by a series of mysterious murders.

The new spin-off series from The Addams Family appears to combine the themes of popular storylines such as Harry Potter, Twilight and Strange Things- a recipe contributing to the show's initial success.

After less than two weeks after its launch on November 23, Wednesday is already one of the five most successful Netflix series in history. If things continue as they are, it could soon become the most watched series in Netflix history.

Also, in on the project is spooky vibe-creating extraordinaire Tim Burton, who directed four of the show's episodes and is its executive producer.

Contributing to the growing cult surrounding the series, in recent days, a dance from one of the episodes referred to as the Wednesday dance has become a viral hit in Tiktok under the hashtag : wednesday dance.

The criticism

Ortega is facing backlash after she confessed that she filmed the dance scene on the hit Netflix series ' Wednesday ' while testing positive for Covid. The 20-year-old actor made the confession during an interview with NME.

During the candid chat, she revealed that her infamous dance scene was filmed during her ''her first day with Covid, so it was awful to film.''

Following the confession, social media critics were quick to criticise her decision to film the scene despite experiencing symptoms.

Another insisted that the star filming ''filming that dance scene while she had Covid is not impressive.''

A separate critic stated that they were ''disappointed to learn that Jenna Ortega had Covid symptoms on set but was still allowed'' to film the dance scene.

The dance scene has gone so viral that Goo Goo Muck by The Cramps has increased its Spotify streams by 9.5 per cent since ''Wednesday'' debuted.

A successful run

The Adams Family, with the character of the daughter Wednesday, was created by US comic artist Charles Addams. His series of cartoons, published in the The New Yorker over a 50-year period from 1938 until his death, featured a satirical and morbid version of the ideal of the perfect American family.

Since then, a TV series [1964-1966] and a feature film directed by Barry Sonnenfeld [1991], along with sequels, as well as new-computer animated films [in 2019 and 2021] have followed.

Now the new take on the cult classic is preparing to become perhaps the most successful series in Netflix history.

According to Netflix's weekly statistics list, the streaming service has reported a total of 752.5 million streaming hours for eight-part series; which means that an estimated 110 million households worldwide have already streamed it.

Currently, the only shows with more streams than Wednesday are the South Korean series Squid Game, which clocked up a good 1.65 billion hours in its first 28 days in 2021, as well as season 4 of Stranger Things [1.35 billion hours], Dahmer - Monster : The Story of Jeffrey Dahmer [856.2 million hours] and season 5 of Money Heist [ 792. 2 million hours ]. [DW]