Thora Birch Exits Tim Burton's 'WEDNESDAY' Over "Personal Reasons"
Welp, that didn’t last too long.
Tim Burton is bringing a new spinoff of the Addams Family to Netflix with a live action series entitled ‘Wednesday’, and today we have word that Thora Birch (Hocus Pocus, Ghost World) has just dropped from the production reports Deadline.
Deadline notes that Birch had completed a good deal of filming on the series, and her character is apparently being replaced with an entirely different character. Talk about bad timing.
The site reports, “I hear Birch had finished filming the bulk of her series regular role as Tamara Novak, Wednesday’s dorm mother and the only “Normie” on staff at Nevermore Academy with a focus on all things botanical. The role will not be recast, with producers looking to add a new character to the show’s first season, I hear. It is unclear whether that character will take over for Tamara and help close out her planned storyline with both of them co-existing on the show or whether the new character will replace Tamara and Birch’s scenes will be reshot.”
Jenna Ortega (The Babysitter: Killer Queen, Scream) will be starring as Wednesday Addams, with Luis Guzmán as Gomez and Catherine Zeta-Jones as Morticia Addams.
Emmy nominee Gwendoline Christie (The Sandman, Game of Thrones) has also joined the cast as a series regular. In the new live-action, comedic coming-of-age tale from Netflix and MGM, Christie will play “Larissa Weems,” the principal of Nevermore Academy who still has an axe to grind with her former classmate Morticia Addams.
Also joining the cast are Isaac Ordonez (Pugsley Addams), Victor Dorobantu (Thing), and George Burcea (Lurch), with Tommie Earl Jenkins (Mayor Walker), Iman Marson (Lucas Walker), William Houston (Joseph Crackstone), Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo (Deputy Santiago), Oliver Watson (Kent), Calum Ross (Rowan), and Johnna Dias Watson (Divina).
The show’s cast will include the previously announced Riki Lindhome (Knives Out, Another Period), Jamie McShane (Mank, Bloodline), Hunter Doohan (Your Honor, Truth Be Told), Georgie Farmer (Treadstone, The Evermoor Chronicles), Moosa Mostafa (Nativity Rocks!, The Last Bus), Emma Myers (Girl in the Basement, Taste of Christmas), Naomi J. Ogawa (Skylin3s), Joy Sunday (Dear White People, The Beta Test) and Percy Hynes White (The Gifted, Pretty Hard Cases).
“Wednesday” is described as “a sleuthing, supernaturally infused mystery charting Wednesday Addams’ years as a student at Nevermore Academy.” It’s said to follow…
“Wednesday’s attempts to master her emerging psychic ability, thwart a monstrous killing spree that has terrorized the local town, and solve the supernatural mystery that embroiled her parents 25 years ago — all while navigating her new and very tangled relationships.”
Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (“Smallville”) are writing and showrunning. Burton is directing.
