There are two major families of fright in pop culture. One reimagines the classic Universal monsters as your standard American sitcoms like Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best. The other portrays a loving family of oddballs who couldn’t be happier about being different from the humdrum world around them. Both shows embraced macabre sensibilities and developed adoring fanbases. The former, of course, is The Munsters and the latter is the live-action adaptation of Charles Addams’ comics strip The Addams Family. You may have grown up either identifying as a Munsters fan or an Addams Family fan, like comic book readers who devote themselves to either Marvel or DC. However, the shows complement each other very well and actually much more connected than you might think.

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Filmmaker and rock star Rob Zombie unveiled his reboot of The Munsters in a trailer that promised it would be released in Fall 2022. Later, it was confirmed that the film was set to premiere on Netflix on September 27, 2022. It was also announced that the comedy series from Tim Burton, Wednesday, starring the titular Addams daughter, will be premiering sometime in the fall as well. While releasing two reboots of similar properties at approximately the same time may seem like a bad idea, it’s just par for the course with these two properties since they both premiered within one week of each other back in 1964.

Creating Two Iconic Families

     MGM Television 

Charles Addams (a curious man himself) introduced the world to his creepy and kooky family in the pages of The New Yorker in 1938. Single-panel comics depicting odd little characters often enjoying macabre entertainment in the middle of a perfectly normal situation, this nameless family became a hit with the public. In the 1960s, television networks came calling and the strip was adapted into a television show. At the same time, television writers Alan Burns and Chris Hayward (who had previously been working on The Bullwinkle Show) got to talking about creating a sitcom about a bizarre family. Inspired by the Addams cartoons, they came up with a pitch called Meet the Munsters. The concept for the show was, more or less, taken from Burns and Hayward and the family became renditions of the Universal Monsters. Both The Munsters and The Addams Family were in production simultaneously, and they premiered within six days of each other in September 1964.

Here Come the 90s

     Paramount Pictures

Both The Addams Family and The Munsters ran for two seasons from 1964 to 1966, but that wasn’t the last we would see of them. They continued producing television specials centered around the families, and in 1988, a modernized 80s series The Munsters Today was released. While not as fondly remembered as the original, it did last three seasons, ending in 1991. That same year saw the release of director Barry Sonnenfeld’s indomitable classic The Addams Family, starring Anjelica Huston as Morticia and the late Raul Julia as her adoring husband Gomez. The film was such a success that spawned a sequel (and an animated series in between) in 1993 that is every bit as beloved as, if not more so than, its predecessor. Then, in 1995, another reboot of The Munsters that showed a lot of promise called Here Come The Munsters was broadcast. The following year, a holiday-themed sequel The Munsters’ Scary Little Christmas came and went. 1998 gave us The Addams Family Reunion and the show The New Addams Family to cap off the century.

Returning to Mockingbird Lane

     NBC

The end of the 20th Century was much kinder to the families of fright than the beginning of the 21st. We wouldn’t see either return to our screens until 2012, when the failed pilot for a more grounded take on The Munsters from creator Bryan Fuller called Mockingbird Lane was released as something of a Halloween special. Then, things got quiet again for a bit. 2019 gave us The Addams Family as a big-budget animated feature with huge talents like Oscar Isaac and Charlize Theron. While much sillier than the previous films, the characters never looked more like Charles Addams’ original creations. In 2021, the Addams’ returned in their animated form for The Addams Family 2. It would seem that Hollywood was getting back on the spooky family train.

Forever Linked

     Netflix

The fact of the matter is that these two shows will always be connected. They were both inspired by the same source material. They hit the airwaves at just about the same time. Whenever one got rebooted, the other wasn’t far behind. Therefore, the fact that we’re being reunited with our pals the Munsters and the Addamses this fall couldn’t be more perfect. Beyond their scheduling history, though, the shows simply are linked because they offer different and wonderful takes on the traditional family dynamic as depicted in media. They are both close, loving families who look out for each other and offer us something to aspire to. It’s okay to embrace the things that make you different because that’s what makes you special, and as long as you have people around to remind you of that, you can never go wrong.