As one of the most recognized and iconic directors of the last forty years, Tim Burton has not had the greatest run of movie releases in the last decade. So when moving to the small screen for the first time with Wednesday, the director was taking a big chance, especially considering it involved taking on a much-loved franchise. However, it all seems to have paid off with the Jenna Ortega-led series giving Burton his highest audience rating for any project of the last two decades.

Tim Burton may have a solid USP of gothic pale-skinned characters and a definite sense of style about his movies, but that doesn’t always mean the end result has the same level of success. In fact, when it comes to audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes, Wednesday’s current 88% rating is his highest since Big Fish, which landed 89% back in 2003. Having recently seen movies such as Dumbo, Alice in Wonderland and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children fail to connect with audiences, Wednesday has come at just the right time to break Burton’s poor streak.

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To further level out exactly how well Wednesday has been received by audiences, it is also the director’s joint 4th highest rating ever, sitting level with 1994’s Ed Wood and just behind Big Fish, The Nightmare Before Christmas (91%) and Edward Scissorhands (91%). That means currently Wednesday has even overtaken all-time Burton classics like Batman and Beetlejuice.

Wednesday Star Praises Jenna Ortega as ‘Truly Exceptional’ in the Role

Can Wednesday Continue To Keep Its High Rating?

     Netflix

While critics have been a little less on board with Wednesday, it is the audience that matters when it comes to viewer numbers and getting further seasons renewed. For now, it seems on that score the dark series has its boot heels on firm ground. That will be good news for Burton and co-showrunners Al Gough and Miles Millar, the latter of who recently spoke about the plans that are already in place for future seasons.

While there were some fans of the old Addams Family movies that had doubts whether Jenna Ortega could live up to their high expectations, it seems that Ortega has met and surpassed them. As a central character, Ortega’s Wednesday is as ooky, kooky and a little bit spooky as anyone could want. Surrounded by mysteries and a new world that still has plenty of grey areas to be developed, those who binge-watched their way through the first season in record time are now eagerly awaiting news on when Netflix will give the go ahead to season 2.

“For us it’s always looking at the future and when we sit down to create a show, it’s looking at multiple seasons, ideally. That’s never expected, but that’s the anticipation that hopefully the show is successful. So you always lay out at least three or four seasons’ worth of potential storylines for your characters. It can evolve and change. Often, you want to see which characters or cast pop and who you like to write for. So you want to keep it open and organic enough to change it and evolve it, but we certainly have a pretty clear runway of what we want to do in future seasons.”

Wednesday is available now on Netflix.