From Dark Shadows to The Night Stalker, Johnny Depp goes back to old TV

By Jake Dee

Posted 15 years ago

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

From a campy 60s soap to an obscure 70s TV skein? Is Johnny Depp forever eschewing his Hollywood bad-boy image?!?

Deadline is reporting Depp’s production company, Infinitum Nihil, is partnering with Disney to remake THE NIGHT STALKER. Originally a 1972 made-for-TV film that spawned a TV spinoff called “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” two years later, the show starred the great Darren McGavin (A CHRISTMAS STORY) in a detective lead role that Depp is a potential replacement for in the filmic update. Writers are currently being sought after, no director has yet been attached.

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While it’s co-sponsored by Disney, word is THE NIGHT STALKER will be in the “edgier” side of the studio’s family oriented fare. Here’s a synopsis of the original 1972 film:

Carl Kolchak is a newspaper reporter with an abrasive personality that has gotten him fired ten times from various big-city papers. Now he’s reduced to reporting for a relatively small-time paper in Las Vegas. It’s here he gets the story of his life. But will the local sheriff, or the D.A., or even his own boss, let him print it? He has an ally in the FBI agent brought in to investigate this strange case. It seems someone is biting the necks of young girls and draining their blood. Can this killer with supernormal powers really be a 70-year-old Rumanian millionaire? Can he really be a vampire? And can an aging reporter do anything to stop him?

Alright, so what do you say? Between THE NIGHT STALKER, DARK SHADOWS, THE LONE RANGER and an inevitable 5th PIRATES film, where is Johnny Depp’s legacy heading? I know the dude doesn’t like acting and all, but damn, there’s was a stretch when this guy was making some of the most interesting and original movies in town. I guess it all changes when you have kids, eh? That said, I’m really looking forward to seeing THE RUM DIARY this fall.

My girl Michelle is Depp’s DARK SHADOWS co-star

Source: Deadline

About the Author

Jake Dee

Columnist / Reviewer

5,418 Articles Published

Favorite Movies: Horror: Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Silence of the Lambs, Jaws, Black read more Christmas (1974), Friday the 13th (1980), Return of the Living Dead, Halloween (1978), Last House on the Left (1973), way too many to list (in the horror genre alone, not to mention out of genre film) Non-Horror: Stand By Me, Lonely Are the Brave, Lost in Translation, Rushmore, Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man, Sling Blade, The Usual Suspects, Reservoir Dogs, Caddyshack, Stripes, Ghostbusters, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Harold and Maude, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, There Will Be Blood, Boogie Nights, Fargo, No Country for Old Men, The Big Lebowski, and on and on and on and mothafu*kin on

Likes: Film, Books, Words, Writing, Rhyming, Football (49ers, Lions), Basketball, Wiffle ball, read more Womens Gymnastics, Movies, Music, Underground hip-hop, Reggae, 50s and 60s R&B, Cinema, Alcohol (vodka, rum, whiskey will do), Beer, John Madden football, Scrabble, Clue, Crossword Puzzles and Word Searches, Horror flicks, Saved by the Bell, Married With Children, Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Entourage, Tales from the Crypt, Motion Pictures, Michelle Pfeiffer, Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson, Ellen Burstyn, Scorsese, the Brothers Coen, Mexican Food, Italian Food, Cats, The Color Green, The Beach.

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