Everyone’s favorite family of monsters is getting a reboot! It’s wholesome horror, everyone! Hooray! First The Addams Family, now this! What a time to be alive.
Who are The Munsters, anyway?
And are they just a copy of The Addams Family? Or were they the original horror movie blueprint? Weirdly enough, the two horror families hit TV screens at virtually the exact same time in the 1960s! Spooky! Who are the Munsters? The Munsters are a ghoulish family that includes Herman Munster, a.k.a. Frankenstein’s monster, serving as the papa and Lily Munster as his vampire wife. They have a werewolf-like son name Eddie and a spooky niece named Marilyn. Also in the Munster home is Grandpa, an aging Count Dracula figure, and Spot, the family’s pet dragon. They’re just your average American family, gang. Nothing weird going on here.
What’s the deal with the reboot?
In typical Hollywood fashion, the Munsters will be relocated to California to reside in Mockingbird Heights, a play on their original address at 1313 Mockingbird Lane. The lighthearted sitcom tone of the original show will be traded for one of grim horror. The Munsters aren’t even in the name anymore! The series will now be called 1313. How ominous.
There isn’t a lot of other information on 1313. Like the skeletons that will no doubt hang in characters’ closets, details of the series are being kept under lock and key. This is not the first time that an attempt has been at a Munsters reboot, mind you. NBC tried to relocate the family in hipster Brooklyn in 2017, but it just didn’t pan out. Rereading that sentence, that might have been a good thing. I don’t wanna see Herman Munster running a vintage record store with a flannel shirt and handlebar mustache. I don’t think the world is ready for that image.
Another reboot attempt, written by Bryan Fuller (Hannibal) and starring Jerry O’Connell and Eddie Izzard, aired as an hour-long special in 2012. And of course, there’s Rob Zombie’s already forgotten Munsters movie from 2022. Hopefully 1313 succeeds where other reboots have failed.
Development of 1313 is being spearheaded by James Wan, with Lindsey Anderson Beer (Pet Sematary: Bloodlines) set as showrunner. Atomic Monster and LAB Brew are the production companies responsible for the reboot, and the places to show up with an angry mob bearing torches and pitchforks if it isn’t any good. The longline says the series “lives and breathes within the Universal Monsterverse” and those Universal Monsters deserve nothing but the best.
