TV
‘Wednesday’ Season 2 Featurette Goes Inside Tim Burton’s Stop-Motion Sequence
Tim Burton returned to his stop-motion roots in the Season 2 premiere of “Wednesday” with The Tale of the Skull Tree.
A new featurette exploring the sequence can be seen below, along with the animated tale itself, about an ambitious boy who creates a mechanical heart to save his own live.
“I really enjoyed every day with it, because it was fun and creative,” says Burton. “Seeing these puppets come to life, there’s just something very magical about it.”
“Wednesday” Season 2 Part 1 is now streaming on Netflix, with Part 2 to follow on September 3.
Jenna Ortega stars as Wednesday Addams, who must navigate family, friends and old adversaries, propelling her into another year of delightfully dark and kooky mayhem. Armed with her signature razor-sharp wit and deadpan charm, Wednesday is also plunged into a new bone-chilling supernatural mystery.
Emma Myers, Steve Buscemi, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Luis Guzman, Isaac Ordonez, Joy Sunday, Billie Piper, Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo, Moosa Mostafa, Georgie Farmer, Victor Dorobantu, Evie Templeton, Owen Painter, Noah B. Taylor, and Hunter Doohan also star.
Series creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (“Smallville,” Beetlejuice Beetlejuice) are back as showruners.
Burton executive produces and directs four of Season 2’s eight episodes, with Paco Cabezas (“The Umbrella Academy”) and Angela Robinson (Professor Marston & the Wonder Women) each helming two others.
Daniel Kurland wrote in his review, “Burton’s efforts this season indicate that he has a lot more gas in the tank here than he did in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. There’s a phenomenal stop-motion campfire story in the season premiere that has so much personality and energy. It conjures vintage Burton in the best way possible.”
Blade Runner is headed to the small screen in Prime Video’s upcoming Blade Runner 2099, set 50 years after Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049, in a world where replicants have emerged on top after an uprising.
Humans are no longer in power.
At the forefront of the new series are stars Michelle Yeoh (Everything Everywhere All At Once) and Hunter Schafer (Cuckoo), and EW has shared the first images of their characters.
Yeoh stars as a replicant Blade Runner named Olwen, facing the final days of her life. It’s a twist on the Roy Batty story from the first film; here, that story will be told from the replicant’s perspective.
Opposite her is Schafer as Olwen’s partner, Cora, a human fugitive pretending to be a replicant. Olwen and Cora will be working together to investigate missing rogue replicants.
Blade Runner 2099 comes from Alcon Entertainment, Scott Free, and Amazon Studios. Silka Luisa (“Shining Girls”) is writing, showrunning, and executive producing.
Jonathan van Tulleken (“Shōgun”) will direct and executive produce the first two episodes.
Luisa tells EW that Ridley Scott’s seminal sci-fi noir acts as the series’ North Star, but it’ll forge its own identity: “We leaned into sunshine noir. You’re still very much in the Blade Runner world, but the show is about a birth. It’s about a birth of a city. It’s about a birth of a replicant era. These characters are discovering who they really are. And so the climate is hot, it’s sticky, it’s sunny. We’re on the coast a lot. We’re in Santa Monica a lot. So it’s like you’re seeing Ridley’s texture, but you’re seeing it in the sunshine noir filter.”
The showrunner adds, “The show is really imagining what comes after us, and what does it mean to be human in a world where humanity is no longer relevant?“
Dimitri Abold (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes), Lewis Gribben (Somewhere Boy), Katelyn Rose Downey (The Nun II), and Daniel Rigby (Renegade Nell) also star in the upcoming series. Johnny Harris (A Gentleman in Moscow), Amy Lennox (Only Child), Sheila Atim (The Woman King), and Matthew Needham (House of the Dragon) join as recurring guest stars.
Blade Runner 2099 is expected to premiere later this year, so stay tuned.
Credit: Clay Enos/Prime Video
Credit: Clay Enos/Prime Video
Credit: Clay Enos/Prime Video
Credit: Clay Enos/Prime Video
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