From the severed hand of Screenrant, composer Danny Elfman revealed that Wednesday shattered one of Tim Burton’s film creating rules, and how the mentor to all of our childhood monsters reacted to breaking tradition. The notorious director produced the series and masterminded an array of episodes, inviting the void society of souls, a.k.a Charles Addams’ brilliantly bizarre family, to Netflix, while Elfman orchestrated the theme song and collaborated with Chris Bacon (65, Strong Enough) to engineer the soundtrack.
Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday Addams uncovers decades-old conspiracies, shuddering paradoxes, and heart-stuttering horrors at her new supernaturally-run boarding school.
Elfman laid out vein for GQ to follow the creative tactics of evolving the title theme and score for the second season of Wednesday.
Elfman (The Simpsons, Spider-Man: No Way Home) said that Burton typically avoids using previous theme songs in his work while nurturing projects based on breathing properties. But just this one time, Burton allowed Elfman to unite elements of the emblematic 60s show’s theme into the Netflix production. Elfman left the details below:
“Well, you know Tim is usually adamant that we not do that. Batman, we never touch it. Planet of the Apes, we never touch it. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, never reference it. He says ‘I want to start from scratch’. But with Wednesday, he was more open-minded, and I kept saying ‘I’d like to bring in just a harpsichord in the sound, just to connect us to the original’. And he was like ‘Okay, we can do that.’
And the beauty of the original theme, which I love so much, is that I could be playing playing playing like this whole piece of music, and end with (The original Addams Family theme). It’s the easiest theme in the world to create a connection to. And every now and then I would sneak in, go and see if Tim was going to, like, smack me down. And he’d listen and he’d go ‘… Okay’, and I was like ‘Yes!'”
The differences in Wednesday from The Addams Family firmly stand out, even from a distance. While Wednesday’s score had some unique elements from the television show’s theme song, it was never fully saturated with The Addams Family song in the first season, forcing the show to step out from under the umbrella of previous adaptations.
Wednesday patented crucial transformation for the franchise. Instead of the show fixating on the complete set of Addams Family collectibles, the series now witnesses a panoramic view from Wednesday herself. With Wednesday drastically shaking the collar of the franchise’s habitual structure, the show now has the burden of avowing that this very experimental premise can achieve success.
After gathering critically high viewership as the second most-watched English-language show on Netflix, the series proves that it has the essentials of successful streaming series. Netflix quickly renewed the show for a second season only two months after its initial release, leaving fresh and versed fans hungry for another thrashing from Nevermore and Wednesday Addams. As Ortega (X, Scream) writhes from promotion into producer, fans are left feeling ever more convinced that Ortega and creatives will stagger up to their eyeballs thumping with the collision the actress had on the first season’s script.
Burton (Dumbo, Alice Through the Looking Glass) and Elfman have banded together on roughly 20 different projects, forging many haunting scores that continue to send people to mental hospitals based off of their constant repeat strategy inside the hive mind. Though Elfman’s score for the series featured atoms from the original show, Wednesday’s soundtrack, nor concept, echo what came before, proving that it can suck you down its own nihilistic wormhole.