Will 'Wednesday' break Netflix records?

Wednesday Addams (played by Jenna Ortega) never laughs — and being nice isn't her thing either. She is allergic to colors, which is why she only wears black. Her new roommate, a cute girl with blonde hair and a penchant for pink, wants to know what happens if she wears colors. "I break out into hives and then the flesh peels off the bones," Wednesday replies with a piercing look.

Their differences don't stop the two roommates from becoming friends, though.

In the Netflix series"Wednesday," the girls attend Nevermore Academy, a boarding school for children and teenagers with special powers — Wednesday's is her psychic ability — in the northeast of the United States.

In addition to navigating social relationships, Wednesday and her peers must watch out for vampires, werewolves and other scary creatures, while monsters roam the surrounding woods. As if all of that wasn't enough, the nearby town of Jericho is rocked by a series of mysterious murders.

The new spin-off series from "The Addams Family" appears to combine the themes of popular storylines such as "Harry Potter," "Twilight" and "Stranger Things" — a recipe contributing to the show's initial success.

After less than two weeks after its launch on November 23, "Wednesday" is already one of the five most successful Netflix series in history. If things continue as they are, it could soon become the most-watched series in Netflix history. Also in on the project is spooky vibe-creating extraordinaire Tim Burton, who directed four of the show's episodes and is its executive producer.

Contributing to the growing cult surrounding the series, in recent days, a dance from one of the episodes referred to as the "Wednesday dance" has become a viral hit on Tiktokunder the hashtag #wednesdaydance.

The Addams Family, with the character of the daughter Wednesday, was created by US comic artist Charles Addams. His series of cartoons, published in The New Yorker over a 50-year period from 1938 until his death, featured a satirical and morbid version of the ideal of the perfect American family.

Since then, a TV series (1964-1966) and a feature film directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (1991), along with sequels, as well as new computer-animated films (in 2019 and 2021) have followed.

Now the new take on the cult classic is preparing to become perhaps the most successful series in Netflix history.

'Squid Game' still holds streaming record

According to Netflix's weekly statistics list, the streaming service has reported a total of 752.5 million streaming hours for the eight-part series; which means that an estimated 110 million households worldwide have already streamed it.

Currently, the only shows with more streams than "Wednesday" are the South Korean series "Squid Game," which clocked up a good 1.65 billion hours in its first 28 days in 2021, as well as season 4 of "Stranger Things" (1.35 billion hours), "Dahmer - Monster: The Story of Jeffrey Dahmer" (856.2 million hours) and season 5 of "Money Heist" (792.2 million hours). 

This article was originally written in German.