As one of, if not the most-viewed English language show in Netflix history, after the writers and actors strike, it was a huge priority to get Wednesday season 2 out as soon as possible. That’s in the works, even with Jenna Ortega being impossibly busy now, and there’s some good news about season 2 ahead of its 2025 release date, which has not been specified yet past that window.
A report from Collider says that Tim Burton is directing four episodes of Wednesday, four out of eight, if the episode count matches season 1’s and I don’t know why it wouldn’t. That is…the same number that he directed in season 1, where no doubt Netflix is doing to do everything it can to match that success.
Burton directed the first four episodes of season 1, the ones that hooked everyone, and I’d argue some of the best. The final four episodes were split between directors Gandja Monteiro and James Marshall. All episodes were written by a combination of Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (ah, Smallville flashbacks), Kayla Alpert, April Blair and Matt Lambert. Season 2 has new directors besides Burton, Paco Cabezas and Angela Robinson, it’s reported.
It may not shock you to learn that the director of the recent Jenna Ortega-starring horror hit, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was…Tim Burton. Clearly he and Jenna have found their groove as partners, and after the wildly successful Wednesday season 1 with 1.7 billion hours viewed and nearly $300 million at the box office for Beetlejuice, they’re heading into what may be another record-breaker in Wednesday season 2. I’m sure Netflix is thrilled.
Again, the one thing we still do not know is a fixed release date for Wednesday season 2, other than the general idea that it will be out in 2025. If it’s pushed toward later in the year, that may be almost a three year wait for the next season of a show that sure does not seem like it should take that long to produce, and it’s emblematic of how awful these wait times are now for most streaming shows. Though most are year and a half to two years, not almost three.
It also stands to reason that Netflix is probably going to try to pull its new “split a season of a show in half” move with four episodes of Wednesday airing in one month and four in another, a ploy to get people to keep subscriptions for two months rather than cancelling after one. I’ve argued this has done harm to every show that’s done it, and is worse than both weekly viewing and full-binges, the kind Netflix is normally known for. I hope it avoids it, but I doubt it.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
