The Addams Family Timeline Explained

Because "The Addams Family" has such a long history on the big and small screen, it's easy to forget that they made their first appearance on the page. The man behind everyone's favorite morbid family is Charles Addams, a prolific cartoonist who worked for some of the biggest publications of the day, including TV Guide and Collier's.

However, his longest stint was with The New Yorker, to which he contributed around 1,300 cartoons. Interestingly enough, his Addams Family comic strips (which didn't even have a name at the time) made up only 58 entries of the voluminous work he produced for the magazine. The bizarre family made its debut in its pages in 1938. As depicted in the cartoons, the family differs a fair amount from the various incarnations that it inspired in the following decades. Still, many of their classic elements were introduced under the pen of Charles Addams, including the pitch-black humor and satire of the nuclear family. Addams' family would achieve a higher profile with the release of his 1959 collection, "Dear Dead Days: A Family Album," and from there, it would only be a matter of time before "The Addams Family" would hit the mainstream in a big way.

In the first season episode, "Lurch, the Teenage Idol," Gomez is impressed with the Addamses' monosyllabic butler and in-house harpsichordist, Lurch, and convinces a record company to sign him and release an album. Despite mostly consisting of graveyard grunts, Lurch's music is a big hit with the kids, and he becomes a bona fide pop star. The fame gets to his head, however, and he decides to leave his position as a butler to focus on his music career.

While this may sound like simply another whimsical day in the life of the Addams Family, this episode is unique in the characters' legacy, as it had a real-world impact in the form of a brief but popular dance craze creatively titled "The Lurch." The episode inspired a song of the same name by Grammy Award-winning record producer Gary Paxton (who also produced the similarly-themed "Monster Mash"). If this all sounds too nutty to be true, there's a clip of Lurch actor Ted Cassidy dancing to the song on the 1960s music variety show, "Shindig!"

The Addams Family may have had an auspicious animated debut with their appearance on "The New Scooby-Doo Movies," but their next foray into animation wasn't as successful. The premise of "The Addams Family" saw them traveling across the country and finding themselves in a range of spooky and silly adventures — not unlike those experienced by a certain talking dog and his groovy friends.

The series only lasted for one season and is largely forgotten today. It simply didn't have much going for it, as the concept of the show was already put to better use by Scooby-Doo, so it was probably too redundant for general audiences. One of the few bright spots in the animated series was that it brought back Jackie Coogan and Ted Cassidy as Uncle Fester and Lurch, but that's hardly enough to save an otherwise typical early 1970s cartoon (although the show's creators deserve credit for having the Addams Family drive around in a camper that's shaped like their crumbling Victorian home).

Charles Addams' creation was relatively dormant throughout the 1980s but kicked off the next decade with a bang. Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, "The Addams Family" features a star-studded cast, including Raul Julia as Gomez, Anjelica Huston as Morticia, Christopher Lloyd as Uncle Fester, and Christina Ricci as Wednesday. The 1991 film follows the eponymous family as they celebrate the return of the long-lost Uncle Fester, who's been suckered into a sinister plan by a couple of con artists looking to steal the Addams Family fortune.

It wasn't an easy film for first-time director Sonnenfeld, who had to contend with the production switching studios in the middle of filming and executives meddling with the project. "The whole second half of the shoot we were working for a studio that thought we were uncuttable and unreleasable, so things got more difficult," explains Sonnenfeld. However, the troubled production managed to power through these obstacles and become a box office hit, reintroducing "The Addams Family" to a new generation.

There's no shortage of merchandise based on hit movies, and because it's so common, much of it is pretty cheap and unmemorable. However, a rare exception is "The Addams Family" pinball machine. The machine was released in 1992 by Bally Games and, according to Wired, has become one of the most sought-after and highest-selling pinball machines ever made, with more than 20,000 units sold. That number may not sound too high compared to records sold, but in the pinball world, a hit game usually sells around 8,000 to 14,000 units.

Luck certainly had a lot to do with the success of the game. Clay Harrell, the owner of the Ann Arbor Pinball Museum in Michigan, told Wired that "The Addams Family" pinball machine "checked all the boxes." "The timing of the release and movie, the theme capturing people that remembered the original TV series and the success of the new movie, and the pinball market at the time, which was doing very well," Harrell said. However, the game also included many entertaining features that were not typical of pinball machines made up to that point, giving it an edge over contemporary units and contributing to its legendary status.

It would be some time before audiences would see their favorite morbid family back on the big screen. To hold them over, a direct-to-video sequel, "Addams Family Reunion," was released in 1998, no doubt in an attempt to capitalize on the waning interest from the previous installment (as well as trying to charm fans with "family" puns. Surely "Addams Family Feud" will be announced any day now). The plot revolves around Gomez and Morticia learning that Grandma and Grandpa Addams have been stricken with the incredibly common disease of normality. They decide that the only way to restore their grim disposition is to organize a family reunion and find a relative who might have a cure. However, a mix-up ensues that results in the Addams Family going to an "Adams" family reunion.

The PG rating prevented "Addams Family Reunion" from going for darker and racier jokes, resulting in a watered-down version of the hit Paramount films. The small production budget didn't help either, but this film is salvaged somewhat by an enthusiastic performance from the always-watchable Tim Curry as Gomez Addams. While "Addams Family Reunion" is not an official sequel to the feature films, it did see Carel Struycken return as Lurch as well as Christopher Hart handily reprising his role as Thing.

Tim Burton is the perfect choice for an "Addams Family" project. As Barry Sonnenfeld revealed to Variety, Burton was considered to direct the 1991 feature before he ultimately got the job, saying, "I will tell you that there were two other directors approached — Tim Burton and Terry Gilliam — and they're both really good choices. But they both turned it down, so that's how I ended up getting it." While Sonnenfeld did a solid job with his version, one can't help but wonder how a Burton-helmed version of the film would've turned out, considering the neo-gothic aesthetic that is especially characteristic of "Beetlejuice" director's work.

It came as no surprise when, in 2010, it was announced that Burton was tapped to direct a stop-motion version of "The Addams Family." Burton apparently wanted to go back to the biting humor that characterized Charles Addams' original cartoons that rarely appeared in the TV and film iterations. Unfortunately, that project fell apart, and while official details on why are hard to come by, according to Burton it may have had to do with creative differences. The director told Empire that it "never really went anywhere," adding, "I was intrigued by it...but I think they wanted to go a more computer-generated way."

Tim Burton's assessment of why his project never materialized seems to have been correct, as the next time we would see the Addamses would be in a computer-animated film. The plot opens with a flashback to Gomez and Morticia's wedding, which was interrupted by an angry mob that hates their morbid preoccupations and chases them to an abandoned asylum. The doom-and-gloom bride and groom meet Lurch, a former patient of the asylum, and it's there they decide to start a family. Flash forward to the present, and the Addamses have to again contend with a population that rejects them for their gothic lifestyles.

This family-friendly take on "The Addams Family" features an all-star voice cast that includes Oscar Isaac as Gomez, Charlize Theron as Morticia, Chloë Grace Moretz as Wednesday, Finn Wolfhard as Pugsley, Nick Kroll as Uncle Fester, Snoop Dogg as It, and Bette Midler as Grandmama. While the cast does a solid job, the film's approach is a little too sweet for the typically ghoulish material, and that may be off-putting for fans of previous incarnations of the characters.

After Tim Burton turned down "The Addams Family" in 1991 and his stop-motion "Addams Family" project fell apart in 2010, the quirky filmmaker and the altogether ooky clan have finally joined for a match made in Hot Topic. The product of this gothic union is the 2022 Netflix series "Wednesday," which follows the woeful character as she adjusts to life as a teenager at Nevermore Academy. What separates this series from other coming-of-age shows is that Wednesday has psychic powers and is on the hunt for a monster that's killing locals, and, of course, her school is named after a line from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven." 

Jenna Ortega stars as Wednesday Addams alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Addams, Luis Guzmán as Gomez Addams, and a special appearance from Christina Ricci, who played Wednesday in the '90s theatrical films. It's a bit surprising that it took so long for Burton to work on an "Addams Family" project, but we're sure glad that this is the one he ultimately ended up with. The director has always been drawn to outsider protagonists, and it sounds like this series' take on the titular character struck his fancy. He told Empire, "When I read this [script], it just spoke to me about how I felt in school and how you feel about your parents, how you feel as a person. It gave 'The Addams Family' a different kind of reality. It was an interesting combination."