The first season of Wednesday was filmed in Romania. Alfred Gough, Miles Millar and Tim Burton, those responsible, found there the locations to represent the gloomy universe of The Addams Family and also possibly a way to cut costs. But, for the second season, production is moving: filming will take place in Ireland.
The information comes from Deadline, which does not know exactly the Irish locations in which the ten episodes of the second season will be recorded. What they do indicate is the reason for the move: Romania had logistical problems and, after the success of the first season, it makes sense to facilitate production for the team. And when does filming start? It is expected that from April next year.
When it premiered in November 2022, Wednesday became a phenomenon of proportions that not even Netflix expected. It tells the adolescence of Wednesday Addams, here played by Jenna Ortega, upon entering Nevermore, the academy where her parents Morticia (Catherine Zeta Jones) and Gomez (Luis Guzmán) studied when they were young. Wednesday soon found a way to feel comfortable with her sadistic and cynical instincts: investigating a series of murders in the local woods, committed by a monster.
Wednesday proved to be, in reality, a very classic teenage series with the themes of the genre. There was a romantic triangle with the perfect kid, Tyler (Hunter Doohan), and the taciturn, Xavier (Percy Hynes White). The protagonist’s difficulties in fitting in were addressed and she even became a source of ridicule for the popular ones, led by the mermaid Bianca (Joy Sunday).
And, as an accomplice, he established an endearing relationship with Enid, his roommate, a werewolf with problems becoming the latter. It was a cocktail that screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar knew inside out after exploring Superman’s adolescence in Smallville.
But Wednesday, despite representing a television model that is so classic and opposite to groundbreaking, knew how to attract Netflix subscribers. Tim Burton allowed adult audiences to be interested, in part because of the participation of Christina Ricci, whom adults remembered as Wednesday Addams in Barry Sonnenfeld’s films. Jenna Ortega as the new It-girl and the dark tone of the fictional universe were attractions for young people. And the harmlessness of Gough and Millar’s creative approach, with less twisted scripts than what they sold in the pilot episode, made Wednesday the ideal series to watch with the family.
The figures speak for themselves: with 252 million views in its first three months in the catalogue, Wednesday is the most viewed English-speaking series in the history of the platform, even surpassing the fourth season of Stranger Things, which obtained the most hours views (1.838 million hours compared to little Addams’s 1.718 million hours, but only 140 million views). The only series that surpasses it is The Squid Game, which has accumulated 265 million views.
This resounding success did not help the second season of Netflix to quickly enter production. First, Netflix had to negotiate a second season with MGM Television, the production company in charge of the project (and which is owned by Amazon). And, due to the strike of writers and later actors, the episodes could not be finished to have a new batch of episodes available at the end of 2023 or beginning of 2024.
With filming scheduled for spring, it cannot be ruled out that the first part of the second season could arrive at the optimal time: in the fall of 2024, two years after the first season.
