Teaser for Addams Family animated film can’t quite beat reboot fatigue

One of America's most iconic fictional families is getting another reboot with MGM's new animated film The Addams Family.

MGM just dropped the first teaser for its animated reboot of The Addams Family, and it's exactly what you'd expect from the franchise-no more, no less. Do I sound a teensy bit grumpy? Chalk it up to reboot fatigue.

American cartoonist Charles Addams created the characters in 1938, originally as a series of single-panel cartoons published in The New Yorker. They were his satirical sendup of American "family values," turning the entire social framework upside down. The characters proved so popular that ABC created a 1964 live-action sitcom, The Addams Family, based on them. (Not everyone was pleased by the development. Wallace Shawn was editor of The New Yorker at the time, and his refined sensibilities were allegedly so offended by the TV series that he actually banned Addams Family cartoons from the magazine; the characters didn't return to its pages until he retired in 1987.)

Animated versions of the family have appeared regularly in film and TV since the 1970s, and Fox unsuccessfully attempted to revive the original TV series in 1998 with The New Addams Family. But it was two live-action feature films in 1991 and 1993, respectively, that defined their canonical representation in popular culture: The Addams Family and Addams Family Values.

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