Obviously Netflix is working on a Wednesday spinoff show

Wednesday, Tim Burton’s series all about the ooky-spooky eldest Addams Family daughter, is the most popular English-language program Netflix has ever produced. With that kind of success comes talk about spinoffs. According to Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw, they’re working on one about Wednesday’s Uncle Fester, played on the show by Saturday Night Live alum Fred Armisen.

And that may just be the beginning. “Netflix is eager to establish a pipeline of Addams Family programs to build off the success of Wednesday,” Shaw writes. Although none of this has been officially announced yet — shows die in development all the time — some fans are already upset by the original Wednesday show becoming diluted by too many spinoffs. “Not everything needs to become a ‘universe’, just have more Uncle Fester in the series,” writes one fan on Twitter/X. “Can nothing exist without being in some kind of universe?” bemoans another. “Just make more Wednesday please lol. Why can’t y’all let something sit and breathe for a little,” said a third. And so on.

Shaw points out that the reason so many studios are so keen on sequels and spinoffs is because TV has gotten more expensive to produce in recent years, and so studios feel the need to bank off properties they know already work. Hence, instead of spending money on a new series, we get spinoffs and reboots and such.

That basic logic has been true in the movie and TV business for a long time, but it has been super-charged as of late. Even networks like HBO, which were once known for their original programming, are making prequels to Game of Thrones and sequels to Sex and the City. And it’s not that those shows are bad — obviously we love House of the Dragon around here — but if even HBO is playing the spinoff game, you know it’s serious. Another striking example is the movie studio A24, which has announced its intention to shift away from the original films on which it’s built its reputation and make more “big IP projects.”

That said, Netflix has been at the spinoff game for a while, so it’s hard for me to believe that anyone is surprised by the Wednesday news. They’re working on a Stranger Things spinoff. They’ve already put out multiple spinoffs of The Witcher. They were planning a spinoff to Shadow and Bone before that cinematic universe collapsed and got canceled.

The Shadow and Bone incident illustrates the danger of this method. The point of making sequels and spinoffs is to make money, but if you stretch yourself too thin, if you make bad picks, it can cost you dearly. Netflix invested a lot into developing a Shadow and Bone cinematic universe only to toss the whole thing out. Better it had concentrated on making the original series and then, if there’s huge demand down the line, work on a spinoff.

As for Wednesday, Netflix is working on season 2. The first season was indeed very popular, but will people be as ready and willing to enjoy the second when it finally comes out? What if Netflix spends a lot of money developing this franchise just to find out later that season 1 was a flash in the pan?

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