I feel like I’ve been talking about Tim Burton’s revival of DARK SHADOWS forever. One minute there’s good news and the next it’s not so optimistic.
Every now and again, Burton or Johnny Depp will pop their little heads out and be like, “So, this is how it’s going…” and today it isn’t any different. Before Depp starts in, Sam Sarkar, Depp’s producing partner said this about the difficulty of adaptation, “It’s one thing to adapt a weekly television series into a movie — it’s another thing to take a soap opera that’s been serialized daily and try to boil it down to two hours.” The man has a point. DARK SHADOWS ran on ABC for five years. The revival from 1991 wasn’t as lucky. It only lasted about two months. Plus the show went in a million different directions from time travel to romance to zombies.
Johnny Depp has wanted to play centerpiece Barnabas Collins ever since he was a kid. Now he’s just been trying to find the right way to portray the big-screen version of Collins and do him some justice. Depp said this on the character’s development, “He’s coming around,” Depp told us recently. “He’s a guy who I think is going to be very interesting. He’s going to be a lot of fun in a very outside and strange way. I’m excited.”
The script is still being hammered out by Seth-Grahame-Smith (“Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”), Burton and Depp. A month ago Burton was pleased with how it was coming along, “I’m working on the script, and it’s been kind of a long time coming, but I think I’m getting a script that I like. I don’t really like talking because I’m not really sure what’s happening yet, but I’m excited about it. I think, yes, finally for me, it’s getting to be the right tone.”
For those who have been let down by Burton for awhile now, I really think this may be the one that wins you back. Just a prediction on my behalf. I’ve loved Burton for a long time now and I think DARK SHADOWS gets him back to his old groove.
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