‘The Addams Family’ Was One Of Hollywood’s First Successful Attempts At Replicating ‘Batman’

United Artist Releasing and MGM’s animated The Addams Family is tracking for an over/under $25 million debut weekend. That does seem a tad optimistic, but A) I’ve been in full-blown cynicism/“don’t dare to hope” mode since 2016 and B) my son very much wants to see it. Lord knows United Artist Releasing could use an unmitigated domestic hit, even if Universal will be handling the overseas distribution. By the way, Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson’s The Hustle earned an okay $35 million domestic this summer but $95 million worldwide, making the $23 million con artist comedy/remake a global win.

With the hopes that the animated Addams Family feature is both pretty good and is a breakout hit this weekend, it is yet another example of a cinematic property that was once a huge deal but is now just another IP. While The Addams Family originated as a single-panel comic strip courtesy of Charles Addams, the property is best known for the 1964 television show which starred John Astin and Carolyn Jones and ran on ABC for two season and 64 episodes. It was fondness for that show, more so than the comic strip, which led to Orion greenlighting a live-action movie version of The Addams Family.

The $25 million flick would go over budget by $5 million, leading a panicked (and soon to be bankrupt) Orion to sell the flick to Paramount. That turned out to be a poor decision, although who is to say that Orion would have marketed the film as well as Paramount when the time came to spread the word? Would they have sprung for an MC Hammer rap version of the iconic theme song?

The Barry Sonnenfeld-directed comedy starred Raul Julia, Angelica Houston, Christopher Lloyd, Jimmy Workman and, in a star-making turn, Christina Ricci as Wednesday Addams. Despite mixed reviews, the glossy, stylish and unique unto-itself comedy opened in the key pre-Thanksgiving slot in 1991, arriving as one of the first big post-Batman examples of “eventisizing” an existing property by turning it into a movie.

No, it wasn’t the first big post-Batman comic book/comic strip hit, as New Line’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would earn $200 million worldwide on a $13.5 million budget in early 1990 while, expectations notwithstanding, Walt Disney’s Dick Tracy would earn $162 million on a $47 million budget the previous summer. But it still stood out as an early example of Hollywood reacting to Batman by taking an old property and refurbishing it into a big-budget event movie.  

The film, about a long-lost Uncle Fester seemingly returning home after a 25-year absence, opened with $24 million in November of 1991. For perspective, that was the 12th-biggest opening weekend ever at the time. It earned another $20 million over Thanksgiving weekend, giving it what was the second-biggest non-opening weekend ever behind Batman ($30 million from a $43 million debut) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ($21 million from a $29 million debut) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day ($20.7 million from a $33 million launch).

So, yes, the film clearly clicked with general audiences, either because they liked it more than critics or they were merely curious to sample what was the season’s biggest movie. It earned $113.5 million domestic and $78 million overseas for a $191 million global cume. So, yeah, maybe Orion should have kept the movie.

As for why it did so well, it was a movie based on a property that was beloved by parents who grew up with the 1964 TV show but was also always around in syndication. It had an easy-to-explain premise (it’s about a ghoulish family who essentially treats every day like Halloween), had a dead sexy cast (the Addams’ marriage has become a prime example of a healthy romantic partnership in modern tentpole cinema) and was unlike anything else in the marketplace.

While too many of the post-Batman cash-ins were pulp adventure stories set in the 1930s or 1940s, Addams Family was inspired by the success of Batman but not remotely predicated on it. It was as different from Batman as, many years later, (yellow highlight alert) Hunger Games was from Twilight was from Harry Potter.

Despite a strong showing in November and December of 1991, it can be presumed that audiences weren’t that much more into it than critics were. I say this because, despite being one of the best comedy sequels ever made, and offering a huge upswing in comparative quality, Addams Family Values flopped two years later. The Thanksgiving-set flick, which offered three terrific plots (a new baby in the mix, a potential love interest for Uncle Fester and the two Addams teens being sent off to camp), earned just $48 million domestic in November of 1993.

Maybe it was an early case of audiences rejecting a superior sequel to an inferior original because they didn’t like the first one. Maybe they were merely curious enough to see The Addams Family as a big-budget comic fantasy once and only once. Either way, Addams Family Values suffered the same “only cared the first time” fate of Wayne’s World 2 ($48 million domestic in December of 1993 compared to the $183 million-grossing original in early 1992). In that case, both Wayne’s World and Wayne’s World 2 were relatively equal in quality, give or take personal preferences.

Anyway, we got a direct-to-VHS movie sequel in 1998, one starring Tim Curry and Daryl Hannah. I haven’t seen it, but it was pitched more to kids and allegedly lost much of the patented macabre humor. That ghoulishness in the first two films is part of their enduring popularity. They were just morbid and menacing enough to make kids think they were getting away with something, while Ricci’s deadpan Wednesday was a role model to disenchanted kids who grew up feeling like proverbial freaks.

I will be curious to see how this new animated film performs this weekend. Non-sequel toons, and even most sequel toons, have had a rough go in 2019, and the previous Addams Family series, at least the first one, was special specifically because it was unique and special. Goth fashion and ghoulish sarcasm are now almost the status quo, while an all-star cast (this one features the vocals of Oscar Isaac, Charlize Theron, Chloe Grace Moretz, Finn Wolfhard, Nick Kroll, Snoop Dogg, Bette Midler and Allison Janney) only gets you so far.

Nonetheless, we’ve seen with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (either the 2007 animated film which opened with $25 million or the 2014 live-action reboot that grossed $491 million worldwide) that a long-dormant property can revive itself if it remains well-liked and avoids falling off the pop culture radar.