Depp-bonham-burton(Johnny Depp with Gomez and Morticia)

UPDATE 3-19: MTV spoke with Burton’s people, who said, “There is no truth to the story. Tim has not lined up any of his upcoming projects.”  So they deny it’s a done deal, but the second sentence seems to say it’s still a possibility.

In a move that I’d wonder why happened yet if it hadn’t already happened twice in the 90s, Hollywood is making an Addams Family movie.  Tim Burton will direct, because he’s already basically made like four Addams Family movies.

[From Deadline] Tim Burton will direct a 3D, stop-motion animated film based on Charles Addams’ original ghoulish cartoon drawings of The Addams Family. Illumination Entertainment, Universal’s family film unit, has acquired the underlying rights of the Addams drawings, once a staple of The New Yorker magazine.

Other than being inspired by the same source material, the animated feature is unrelated to previous incarnations of Addams’ work, the 60s TV series, the two `90s feature film comedies that Barry Sonnenfeld directed with Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston, or the Broadway musical opening this spring with Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth in the starring roles.

See?  Based on the New Yorker cartoon; totally unrelated to all those film-remakes of old TV shows and definitely not a blatant attempt to cash in.  I confess that I didn’t even know that the original Addams Family was based on a New Yorker cartoon, but that’s probably because none of the characters was a dog sitting on a psychiatrist’s couch.