While Waiting For Wednesday Season 2, Watch Tim Burton & Ella Purnell’s $296M Dark Fantasy Movie Now Trending On Streaming

With the anticipation for Wednesday season 2 increasing as its 2025 arrival approaches, Tim Burton has a great fantasy film trending on Max that’s perfect to watch while waiting. While Burton rose to fame in the 1980s and 1990s for his distinctive style and ingenuity in the dark fantasy genre, yielding timeless hits like Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and his Batman duology, the director’s films in the 2010s saw a notable decline in consistency with critical and audience adoration. Ultimately, it wasn’t until 2022’s Wednesday that Burton saw a true career comeback, leading to his impressive Beetlejuice 2 success in 2024.

Though Burton experienced several box office disappointments and critical misfires in the 2010s, there were still some notable hits in this era that paved the way for his resurgence with Wednesday. Among his most promising entries was Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children in 2016, which proved a moderate commercial and critical success. The film earned over $296 million at the box office against a reported $110 million budget, and currently holds a 65% Rotten Tomatoes score. Miss Peregrine also bears narrative and tonal similarities to Burton’s Netflix show, providing a terrific viewing on Max before Wednesday season 2’s release.

Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children Is Very Similar To Tim Burton's Nevermore Academy In Wednesday

The "Peculiars" Are Very Similar To Wednesday's "Outcasts"

Tim Burton’s fantasy film Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is currently trending on Max's top 10 movies alongside his 2024 hit Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, and it’s hard not to notice the similarities between the 2016 film and Wednesday upon a rewatch. Miss Peregrine is based on the 2011 novel of the same name, following a teenage boy named Jack who ventures to the magical titular place that houses teens and kids with special powers known as “Peculiars.” This premise, of course, calls to mind Wednesday Addams attending Nevermore Academy, a school for supernatural teens known as “Outcasts.”

Title	Rotten Tomatoes Critics Score	Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children	65%	60%
Wednesday season 1	73%	85%

With a dark gothic atmosphere, a killer on the loose, buried family secrets, ostracized teens with distinctive supernatural powers, and some Burton-esque CGI monsters, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children provided a great lead-in to Burton’s work on the characters, story, setting, and ambience of Wednesday. In some ways, Wednesday season 1 felt like an expansion of the titular setting in Miss Peregrine with a darker Addams Family twist. With more time to dig into the world’s lore and supernatural species, Wednesday also helps make the case that Miss Peregrine might have worked better as a series.

Tim Burton's Wednesday Success Fixed Where Miss Peregrine Went Wrong In 2016

Wednesday Avoided Some Of Miss Peregrine's Worldbuilding Errors

While Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children wasn’t a failure for Burton, it had far more potential for critical success, box office victories, and a franchise future than it fulfilled. One common source of criticism was the 2016 film’s script, which was considered overstuffed while lacking a necessary emotional pull. That wasn’t the case for Wednesday season 1, which paid great care to its emotional storylines and succeeded with a smart and compelling murder mystery narrative.

Miss Peregrine also glossed over much of the story’s more intriguing supernatural history and world, whereas Wednesday season 1 was able to dive deep into Nevermore Academy’s lore, the outcast species’ dynamics, and the relationships among Wednesday’s Addams family tree. Though the Hyde monster is a notable exception, Wednesday also dropped much of the CGI-heavy filmmaking that came to generally define Burton’s work in the 2010s, including Miss Peregrine. Ultimately, Wednesday found the right balance between establishing striking visual atmospheres and crafting a strong narrative with fleshed-out characters that Miss Peregrine struggled with.

Source: Rotten Tomatoes