“Wednesday, for us, from concept until now, has been a three and a half year journey,” said Alfred Gough. “We came up with the initial idea which was teenage Wednesday Addams in boarding school. We had to track down the rights and then we pitched it to the Addams Foundation.”

As screenwriters, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar are known for Shanghai Noon, Smallville, I Am Number Four, Spider-Man 2 (2004), and Into the Badlands. Their latest creation is perhaps most similar to the creation of Smallville, the Superman origin series.

Listen to our conversation about Into the Badlands in Episode 52.

Miles Millar said, “Tonally, this is in the pocket of Smallville. Often times, the studio comes to you, but this time, it was our idea. We put together a 15-page series treatment with photographs, descriptions, log lines for episodes, and that led to a meeting. We had to do the legwork, write the spec treatment, but we felt passionate about the project and fell in love with the idea of doing this.”

“From there, we wrote the first episode, that’s when the pandemic hit. We sent the pilot script to Tim Burton’s agent, even though his agent said he’s never been interested in television,” he continued, “but the agent liked it and sent it to Tim. Four days later, we got a call, he loved it and wanted to meet.”

Tim Burton told Alfred Gough and Miles Millar that he “loved the script” and “would have dated Wednesday Addams in high school.” They shot the series in Romania about a year later.

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