

In 2010, a live musical adaptation featuring Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth opened on Broadway and was nominated for two Tony Awards and eight Drama Desk Awards. The series was rebooted with a 1998 direct-to-video film and a spin-off live-action television series (1998–1999). The films inspired a second animated series (1992–1993) which is set in the same fictional universe. The franchise was revived in the 1990s with a feature film series consisting of The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993). An unrelated animated series aired in 1973. It subsequently inspired a telefilm titled Halloween with the New Addams Family and cameos from the cast in other shows.

In 1964, the live-action television series premiered on ABC and ran for two seasons. Pubert Addams, Wednesday and Pugsley's infant brother, was introduced in the 1993 film Addams Family Values. The dimly seen Thing (later a disembodied hand) was introduced in 1954, and Gomez's Cousin Itt, Morticia's pet lion Kitty Kat and Morticia’s carnivorous plant Cleopatra in 1964. The Addams Family consists of Gomez and Morticia Addams, their children, Wednesday and Pugsley, and close family members, Uncle Fester and Grandmama, their butler Lurch, and Pugsley's pet octopus, Aristotle.

The family members were unnamed until the 1964 television series. The Addamses are a satirical inversion of the ideal postwar American middle-class nuclear family: an odd old money clan who delight in the macabre and are seemingly unaware or unconcerned that other people find them bizarre or frightening. They have since been adapted to other media, such as television, film, video games, comic books, a musical, and merchandise. They originally appeared in a series of 150 unrelated single-panel comics, about half of which were originally published in The New Yorker between 1938 and their creator's death in 1988. The Addams Family is a fictional family created by American cartoonist Charles Addams.
