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Weekend Box Office Numbers: Opening Week

'Dark Shadows' snags just $550K in midnight box office returns

A lukewarm response from critics and a 41 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes certainly won't help fill seats this weekend, despite an all-star cast that includes Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green and Chloe Moretz.

"At once a brash, strutting pop culture pastiche and gloomy exercise in self-cannibalizing nostalgia, "Dark Shadows" is depressing on myriad levels," writes Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday.

"The Avengers" raked in $200 million on its first weekend in theaters.

'Dark Shadows': Offbeat humor is its lifeblood

The film's strength lies in the juxtaposition of director Tim Burton's Gothic world with '70s pop culture references such as lava lamps and the music of the Carpenters.

Arcane 1700s-era dialogue spoken by the central figure, the reluctant vampire Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp), is particularly funny in its incongruity with the flower-power world in which he finds himself.

Though the ads make it look like a ghoulishly kooky Addams Family-style tale, this is by no means an ensemble piece. Nearly everyone other than Depp comes off as drably one-note.

Based on a campy 1966-1971 TV soap opera, the movie focuses on fish-out-of-water (or vampire-out-of-coffin) humor. But it bookends the funny stuff with run-of-the-mill special effects and action. A consistent comic tone would have made it all more enjoyable.

Barnabas' origin story is standard-issue in the realm of monster sagas. A playboy back in the 18th century, he dallied with lusty housemaid Angelique (Eva Green) but fell in love with pure-hearted Josette (Bella Heathcote). But Angelique was a witch who cast a spell that killed Josette and turned Barnabas into a vampire.

Set in the fishing village of Collinsport, Maine, which was established in 1750 by Joshua and Naomi Collins, the story grows lively when their aristocratic son, Barnabas, suddenly emerges in 1972, parched with bloodthirst. He finds his way to his family's ancestral manor, baffled by all he sees in the new world of hippies and troll dolls.

His relatives, now languishing in the faded elegance of the estate, take the return of their ancestor blandly in stride. Barnabas is determined to restore his family's luster and regain control of their fishing enterprise.

Not only does the humor disappear in the attenuated climactic finale, but so does a key character — for no discernible reason.

Depp's dialogue is a comical hybrid of formal and droll: His nemesis, Angelique — now Angie and the town's leading businesswoman — is "a whore of Beelzebub and succubus from Satan." Burton's offbeat montages are amusing, but the story's slow start and overblown conclusion make Dark Shadows half a good movie.

Dark Shadows * * 1/2 out of four
Stars: Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eva Green, Helena Bonham Carter, Jackie Earle Haley, Chloe Grace Moretz
Director: Tim Burton
Distributor: Warner Bros
Rating: PG-13 for comic horror violence, sexual content, some drug use, language and smoking
Running time: 1 hour, 53 minutes
Opens Friday nationwide

The Scoop on Dark Shadows From Tim Burton, Helena Bonham-Carter and The Original Cast

"Dark Shadows is a part of my DNA," says Burton. "I discovered it when I was a pre-teen feeling very awkward and strange about my place in life. I was crazy about its mash-up of vampires, witches and werewolves all swirling in this weird melodrama — there was nothing like it on TV! It formed who I am and the kind of films I would go on to make."

That said, Burton has no interest in being dead loyal to the original. His reboot — costarring Helena Bonham Carter, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eva Green, Jonny Lee Miller and Jackie Earle Haley — is a riff on Rip Van Winkle that finds Barnabas suddenly released from his coffin after 200 years and plopped into psychedelic 1972, complete with mirrored disco balls, caged go-go girls and a guest appearance by Alice Cooper. DS purists are concerned that the trailers for the film, with their heaving, thrusting Barry White score, seem dangerously spoofy. But the boss man swears this is a heartfelt valentine.

"There's a lot of comedy in the movie but we're not here to piss on Dark Shadows," says Burton, who hired white-hot novelist Seth Grahame-Smith (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) to do the screenplay. "Like the series, there is romance, fantasy, horror. We are very serious about this." It didn't help that Burton's wife, Bonham Carter, raised fan hackles last year by stating that the original — which ran from 1966 to 1971 and had, at its peak, an audience of 20 million — "was actually a hilariously bad soap opera." And she's not taking it back.

"My diet growing up was Little House on the Prairie," Bonham Carter says. "Tim and I come from different worlds and slightly different generations so I don't get the appeal of Dark Shadows at all. It was a challenge getting into that acting style, which to me was borderline bad." But don't get her wrong. Bonham Carter says she's "excited" to be playing boozy psychiatrist Dr. Julia Hoffman, "though, to tell the truth, I really wanted Eva Green's role, the jealous witch Angelique, who is in love with Barnabas. But Tim said, 'Are you kidding? I'm wouldn't ask a witch to play a witch!'"

Burton not only dedicates the film to Dan Curtis, the late lion-king creator of Dark Shadows, he also cast some of the show's top stars in cameo roles, including Frid (who died at 87 just last month), David Selby (Quentin), Kathryn Leigh Scott (Josette) and Lara Parker (Angelique). They have become the film's biggest boosters.

"I have complete confidence in Tim Burton's vision," says Selby. "It's good to put a fresh perspective on what we did so many years ago. The fans who are upset have to remember that when we made the series we screwed with beloved monster movies and classic romance novels and turned them upside down! We were hardly reverent ourselves."

Scott, who shares dish from the movie set in her new book Dark Shadows: Return to Collinwood, co-written by Jim Pierson, says she and her fellow vets were treated like gold. "Tim clapped his hands to get the company's attention and said, 'Everyone, the original cast of Dark Shadows' and there was great applause and the shaking of hands and even hugs," says Scott. "It was fantastic." Adds Parker: " We were very moved by Tim and Johnny. They looked into Jonathan Frid's eyes and said, 'We wouldn't be here without you.' It was such a kind and wonderful thing to do."

Burton wasn't sure what to expect. "It's always daunting and scary to meet your childhood heroes — especially in the case of Jonathan Frid — but he was everything I wanted him to be," Burton says. "It was great to have the original cast come over to England to be part of the film. It was important to have that approval and support."

Scott did bristle when a recent L.A. Times piece about the film quoted Burton as saying the original was "actually awful" when it came to its cut-rate production values. Not that she disagrees. "Yes, there were constant bloopers and boom shadows — they were painful then, they're painful now — and our special effects sometimes amounted to no more than a fake bat from a Halloween store dangling from a fishing pole," Scott says. "But I wish people concentrated more on how incredibly innovative our show was. Star Trek and Dark Shadows arrived in the same year. Gene Roddenberry went into the future. We went back in time. But we both told universal stories and morality tales, which is why neither show ever gets old." After filming her scenes, Scott sent Burton a thank-you note "reminding him that we did 1,225 episodes so there is plenty of material for sequels!"

Like Scott, Parker also turned author and is awaiting the release of her third Dark Shadows novel, Wolf Moon Rising. "We still have extremely loyal and vocal followers who are trying desperately to hold on to the old values," Parker notes. "But let's be honest. Our fan base is a drop in the bucket compared to those who follow Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. It's their fans who will decide the success of this movie."

'Dark Shadows' old-school fun

1. Debated (and checked on our smart phones) whether all the songs on the soundtrack were of a piece with the 1972 setting. They pretty much all were, including Top Of The World by The Carpenters ('72), Go All The Way by The Raspberries ('72) and Eighteen by Alice Cooper ('71). The theme from A Summer Place ('59) was the only obvious anomaly.

2. Recalled lines of florid, Grand Guignol dialogue uttered by Depp, an 18th Century blood-sucking gentleman in a happy-face-muraled Chevy Van world. My favourite, an epithet directed at the witch Angelique (Eva Green): "Get thee to Hell, where Asmodeus himself may suckle upon your diseased teat!"

They just don't write insults like that anymore.

As professional courtesy, we mostly stepped around what we actually thought of the movie. This is especially wise when dealing with deliberate camp, which is very subjective.

Video: Tailer.

Why Tim Burton and Johnny Depp choose the projects they do is unpredictable, from Edward Scissorhands onward. The overwrought gothic afternoon soap opera Dark Shadows, about a venerable New England family whose ranks included vampires, werewolves and witches, was an odd '60s pop cult that attracted in equal parts kids, adults and college students who'd get high and laugh.

Replicating it today would be as tough as rebooting Dynasty and trying to get the gay community to embrace it iconically the way they did in the '80s.

What Burton and Depp did (the why is unclear) was to put the premise and much of the dialogue in the hands of genre mash-up specialist Seth Grahame-Smith (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Killer).

The result is more old-school fish-out-of-water than blazingly original. But it retains that soap opera acting style that has always been fun to watch.

And but for being overlong, Dark Shadows is fun if you go with it.

Like Barnabas himself, Dark Shadows kind of wanders aimlessly through its haze of patchouli and lava lamps, tossing out bon mots (pretty funny ones for the most part) and '70s sight gags, all for the mortification of a gentleman from the Enlightenment age.

Also there's a concert sequence by Alice Cooper (playing a party at the Collins mansion). "Ugliest woman I have ever seen," Barnabas sniffs.

The plot has spurned witch Angelique diabolically murdering Barnabas's fiancée Josette (Bella Heathcote), casting a spell that renders Barnabas vampiric and manipulating the townspeople to bury him alive (or undead).

Two centuries later, he's unearthed by construction workers to find his family reduced to a dysfunctional few, including an imperious matriarch (Michelle Pfeiffer), her no-good brother (Jonny Lee Miller), his ghost-conscious son (Gully McGrath) and her surly hippie daughter (Chloe Grace Moretz). Angelique has usurped the Collinses as the leader of Collinsport, and, well, Hell must break loose.

But it's a pastel Hell, with pet rocks and shag carpeting. If that all sounds funny to you, get thee to a theatre.

Depp, Burton bring light comedy to "Dark Shadows"

But there was at least one strange being they hadn't tried - a vampire - and that's about to change.

The odd couple of Hollywood can check that character off their list on Friday with the debut of comedic thriller "Dark Shadows," based on the classic TV soap opera that ran from 1966 - 1971 about vampires, werewolves and witches populating a ghostly manor house in the countryside.

In an era that seems made for sexy bloodsuckers with six-pack abs - TV's "True Blood" and "The Vampire Diaries" as well as the "Twilight" movies - Depp and Burton took an opposite approach. They hark back to the 1970s with a tongue-in-cheek homage to the original TV show that, among its many storylines, told of a vampire in a dark and never-ending search for his long-ago love, Josette.

"Tim and I talked early on: a vampire should look like a vampire," Depp told reporters recently. "It was a rebellion against vampires that looked like underwear models."

Depp plays well-dressed, well-heeled vampire Barnabas Collins who is turned into an otherworldly being in 1750 from a curse by spurned lover Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green), a witch who then buries him alive.

He wakes up in 1972 to learn his family home has fallen into disrepair and the lives of his descendants - played by Michelle Pfeiffer, Johnny Lee Miller and Chloe Grace Moretz - are in disarray. He is determined to restore them all to their former glory when he learns his old nemesis, now named Angie, rules the town in which they all live.

Depp said he used to watch the TV show when he was a boy and always dreamed of bringing it to the big screen. It wasn't until he and Burton worked together on the macabre musical "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" that Depp discovered Burton also was a fan of the show. There was no question that "Dark Shadows" would be yet another collaboration.

Yet rather than creating an updated version set in present day, Depp and Burton set their sights on the 1970s, and let the eccentricities of that era crash with Barnabas' 18th Century comfort zone.

"I wanted Barnabas to come across as ... this very elegant upper echelon, well-schooled gentleman who's cursed in the 18th century and brought back to probably the most surreal era of our time - the 1970s - and how he would react to things," said Depp.

"Not just with technology and automobiles and such, but actual items of enjoyment for people like pet rocks, fake flowers, plastic fruit, troll dolls, lava lamps and the macramé owls."

RETURN FROM THE DEAD

Staying true to the original TV show was important, too. "Dark Shadows" screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith studied DVDs of the series, books written about the characters and the plot lines.

While it only lasted five years on TV, "Dark Shadows," like other TV shows, developed a loyal following while it was on the air and played for years in re-runs. And a 1970 horror flick based on the show performed well in theaters.

At his first meeting with Depp and Burton, Grahame-Smith recalls Depp pantomiming the vampire's movements, while Burton was suggesting that Barnabas' fingers need be one joint longer.

"A lot was born in those early meetings," he said. "What I needed to know about the tone, I relied on them because they were there watching the shows as kids and loving the show. They still have that knowledge of it and that love for it."

So much love in fact, that as Depp began exploring different ideas for playing Barnabas, he decided "it had to be rooted" in original actor Jonathan Frid's stoic portrayal of the vampire.

Depp called Frid's version of Collins a "classic monster," reminiscent of the types found in horror magazine Fangoria coupled with "a kind of rigidity to him - that pull up the back, this elegance that was always there."

If anyone appreciated Depp's take on Collins, it was Frid himself, who died last month at age 87. (He makes a cameo appearance in the film alongside original cast members Kathryn Leigh Scott, Lara Parker and David Selby).

"He had written me a letter a couple of years before and signed a photograph to me - that sort of passing the baton to Barnabas - which I thought was very sweet," said Depp, recalling that Frid also brought his original Barnabas cane for the cameo.

Burton described that day of shooting as "like having the Pope come visit ... part of the reason we were there is because those people inspired us."

Red carpet report: 'Dark Shadows'

When: Monday night

Where: Grauman's Chinese theater, Hollywood

Who: Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eva Green, Jackie Earle Haley, Jonny Lee Miller, Chloë Grace Moretz, Bella Heathcote, director Tim Burton

Re, um, vamping a classic: Depp gets in the vampire business with Dark Shadows (out Friday), a quirky silver screen take on the popular television show that originally ran from 1966 - 1971. Depp plays Barnabus Collins, a rich 18th century playboy cursed by a brokenhearted witch and buried alive, emerging centuries later as a blood-thirsty, elegantly-mannered vampire. "What was important was, there was no way to do the show as a film," said Depp, a longtime fan of the TV series. "There was no way to do that. So what we did is we basically relied on our memories of it and what it made us feel like and also the idea of this vampire coming back 200 years later to a period that is so radically different from where he comes from. 1972 was just the most bizarre period ever."

Scaring the stars: So what actually scares Depp: Witches, werewolves, vampires? "No. Dancing," he said. "The idea of dancing is the only thing that scares me. I'd rather fight a buzzsaw than dance." Green stays away from one particular genre of films. "Oh my god. Japanese horror films," she said. What scares Burton? "Besides this?" the director asked, acknowledging the screaming crowd and the endless press line. "This is pretty scary, don't you think?"

Pfeiffer signs on: Pfeiffer looked stunning in gold Lanvin on the red carpet, and admitted she chased down Burton for the role of the Collins family matriarch. "I would have done anything in the movie," she told reporters. "Actually, by the time I signed on to it there was a script, but the time that I called Tim begging to be in the film there was no script, and he was like, 'I don't know! Yeah, OK! We don't have a script.' And a year went by and I thought, 'OK, it's never going to happen.' But it did!"

Validating vampires: With Twilight, True Blood and The Vampire Diaries fueling bloodthirsty fans these days, did this group pause before diving into the crowded genre? "We didn't really talk about that because Dark Shadows really predates all of that stuff," said screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith. "We didn't worry about well, where do we fit in the vampire universe of today? We wanted to just be true to the show and different." Pfeiffer thinks the nocturnal market is far from saturated. "I don't think people can get enough of vampires and werewolves," Pfeiffer said. Plus, Dark Shadows has "a highly dysfunctional family like most of the families we know and it's just so entertaining."

Young obsessives: "When I was a kid, I was obsessed with vampires," Pfeiffer told reporters. I went to every Dracula movie. I would spring home from the bus stop to get home to get in front of the television to watch Dark Shadows because it came on in the afternoon." Heathcote came more from the Joss Whedon school of the undead. "I watched Buffy," she said.

Pirate v. Vampire v. Tonto: Between Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow, fastidious vampire Barnabus Collins and his upcoming turn as Tonto in The Lone Ranger, which costume is the toughest to wear? "By far, the costume for Barnabus," he dished. "Because everything was built to have this sort of stature, this elegance. And the costume really dictates - it becomes a suit of armor, it sort of dictates how you move. (Costume designer) Colleen Atwood was most definitely a big part of the creation of this character."

Meet-cute: Heathcote plays the object of Barnabas' affection. But young Australian actress admitted to some nerves on the starry set. "At first I was really intimidated, and then everyone just put me at ease. The first time I met Johnny I was I was in rehearsal and he walked up and went to shake my hand and realized he had these prosthetic (vampire) fingers on, so he kind of did this elbow thing, and I was like, 'Ah, this is just a normal human like the rest of us."

Honoring an original: On the red carpet, Depp grew serious for a moment speaking of the original Barnabus Collins, played by Jonathan Frid, who passed away last month at the age of 87: "Bless him," said Depp. "He was a great supporter and for him to pass the baton to me was a great honor."

Rock stars welcome:Dark Shadows is loaded with hallmarks of the seventies, including a cameo by Alice Cooper (who walked the red carpet, and planned to jam with Depp at the after-party). Steven Tyler also walked the red carpet, thanks to a call placed by Depp himself. "I got the phone call last night: 'Come to the premiere and come jam with us after,' " he said, before breaking to hug Burton. He continued, "We're in the studio right now and we're doing our 18th album. I've been hanging out with Johnny and taking the songs after they're done to his house and playing them on his stereo and letting his son play drums to it." Tyler was excited to hit the stage with Depp post-premiere. "Johnny's quite the rocker himself," said Tyler. "Nobody knows that."

Skipping the Met Gala: Green wore a killer, silver-encrusted Tom Ford gown to the premiere. When told she'd fit right in with the glamorous crowd assembling on the East Coast for the Met Gala happening simultaneously, Green shook her head. "It's more interesting to be here, actually," said Green, whose seductive, strong-willed witch gives as good as she gets fighting Depp's Barnabus. Green is currently preparing to starting filming the sequel to 300 in July, "so I'm working out really hard."

Director's cut:Dark Shadows marks Burton and Depp's eighth film together. Does that make their collaborations like a fine wine, even better with age? "Or maybe it's like yogurt and starting to curdle terribly," Burton joked. "We don't really count, we just treat each one like it's a new one and like it's the first time. I think that's why it kind of continues."

Depp, Burton revisit a cult classic

But Depp does remember being drawn to rebel "against vampires that look like underwear models.

"A vampire should look like a vampire," he says at a press conference with Burton, fellow cast members (nearly all dressed in black), and "genre mash-up" novelist Seth Grahame-Smith (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter).

Scripter Grahame-Smith was the architect of the mash-up of TV's Dark Shadows, which took itself very seriously, and the movie's '70s milieu, which is very silly.

What's clear is they began talking Dark Shadows in earnest while filming another mordant project, Sweeney Todd. Both were childhood Dark Shadows fans, though Depp was more obsessed with the show about the fictional town of Collinsport, Maine, home to vampires, witches and werewolves.

"It's almost impossible to consider myself a producer," says Depp, who nonetheless has that credit.

"I can barely produce an English muffin in the morning. But when Tim and I got together and started figuring out how it should be shaped, and Seth came on board, the three of us just riffed and it basically dictated to us what it wanted to be."

Which is? "The idea of this very elegant sort of well-schooled gentleman who's cursed in the 18th century and is brought back to probably the most surreal era of our time, the 1970s, and how he'd react to things. (It's about) how radically different things were -- not just the technology of automobiles and such, but items of kind of enjoyment, pet rocks, fake flowers, troll dolls, lava lamps."

In Burton's "reboot" of Dark Shadows, opening Friday, Depp is Barnabas (originally played by the late Canadian actor Jonathan Frid), heir to an 18th Century fishing empire, who spurns a witch named Angelique (Eva Green), whose revenge consists of murdering Barnabas's love Josette (Bella Heathcote), cursing Barnabas with vampirism and inciting a mob to bury him alive.

In 1972, he is unearthed by an ill-fated construction crew, and discovers the remaining dysfunctional Collinses: an imperious matriarch (Michelle Pfeiffer), her surly, hippie daughter (Chloe Grace Moretz), her wastrel brother (Jonny Lee Miller), his ghost-conscious son (Gully McGrath) and an alcoholic, live-in psychiatrist (Burton's wife Helena Bonham Carter).

He also discovers Angelique is alive, and maybe Josette too. Vampire Vs. Witch. Get ready to rumble, against a background of 1972 pop and rock hits like Steve Miller's The Joker and The Carpenters' Top Of The World (with a concert appearance by Alice Cooper).

The music was Burton's idea.

"Setting it in 1972 was important because of the music," Burton says. "I remember that music from the AM radio. It felt strange at the time, and it still feels strange. That was the weird thing about the quality of music kind of going through everything, like really cheesy pop to really cool hardcore.

"I remember Alice Cooper being a strong influence for me. And he looks exactly the same now, which is really scary. (Living in) Arizona must do wonders." (Video)

The Vampire Who Came Out in the Afternoon

“I should probably have been doing homework or playing sports after school instead of watching ‘Dark Shadows,’ ” he said. “But seeing that show every afternoon, at home, in Burbank, it just doesn’t get much weirder than that.” And for Mr. Burton, the director of “Edward Scissorhands,” “Sleepy Hollow,” and now a splashy silver-screen “Dark Shadows” (opening Friday), “weird” is a term of the very highest praise.

Some pop culture phenomena are easy to understand, he said, like “Star Trek,” which had its premiere just a couple of months after “Dark Shadows” began, in 1966. “Even if you’re not a ‘Star Trek’ fan, you kind of get the dynamic,” Mr. Burton said. But “Dark Shadows,” he continued, is “an acquired taste, and it’s really hard to describe it to people who never saw it.”

He’s right about that. There’s been a lot of supernatural drama on television since the demise of the original “Dark Shadows,” in 1971, but even under the influence of a powerful spell you would have a difficult time coming up with another show that roamed so freely and so recklessly through the underworld of horror pulp. Though nearly forgotten now, the series’s conflicted vampire, Barnabas Collins (played by Jonathan Frid, who died last month), was its biggest draw — at the time, he was more popular than the comparably peculiar Mr. Spock of “Star Trek”— but he was hardly the only unlikely denizen of the soap-opera town of Collinsport, Me. Over the course of 1,225 half-hour episodes Collinsport, a demographic anomaly even by the standards of New England, rolled out the Welcome Wagon for a staggering number of witches, warlocks, doppelgängers, mad scientists, werewolves, and, of course, ghosts, who seemed to descend in waves, like tourists in foliage season.

This satanic soap was Dan Curtis’s baby. Curtis, who had been a successful producer of golf telecasts, had the idea that a Gothic-romance kind of daytime drama — something on the order of “Rebecca,” with an innocent young woman rattling around in a gloomy old house — might appeal to the soap operas’ stay-at-home audience, and ABC gave him a shot. The show didn’t catch on right away, though, so Curtis, with nothing to lose, decided to throw in a ghost. One of the show’s directors said to him, “We’ve crossed the line with this, you know.” But the ratings went up. And they rose even higher when a few months later, in the 211th episode, Barnabas Collins emerged from his grave after almost 200 years of involuntary confinement.

In the context of late-’60s daytime drama these choices were, to put it mildly, counterintuitive. A few years later we would learn to call such desperate moves “jumping the shark,” but what “Dark Shadows” proved at the moment Barnabas’s cold, pale hand reached out of his coffin was that soap-opera narrative is in its essence an act of desperation, like the telling of bedtime stories by weary parents to wakeful kids: the stories just seem to go on and on and on, and the longer your audience stays with you, the more sharks, inevitably, will have to be jumped.

Seen from this point of view what Curtis did in “Dark Shadows” wasn’t all that different from what other, more ostensibly reality-based, soaps did when they found themselves hard up for story lines to hold their viewers’ attention. The traditional daytime dramas have always required a fair amount of willing suspension of disbelief too, what with their amnesia plots and evil twins, their periodic recasting of familiar roles and bizarre reversals of character. When an actor introduced as a villain becomes popular, the producers generally contrive to turn that character into a more sympathetic figure. (See Luke the rapist from “General Hospital.”) In soaps, pretty much anything goes.

But “Dark Shadows” sure felt different. “It kind of created its own universe, had its own weird vibe that wasn’t like anything else,” Mr. Burton said, admiringly. (He used some form of the word “weird” no fewer than 17 times in a 20-minute phone call.) “The fact that it was a soap opera, on TV every day in the afternoon, in itself made it strange. But the tone it had made it even stranger.” Part of that stranger-than-strange tone has to do with the acting style, which inhabits some odd no-creature’s-land between drab soap solemnity and the over-the-top histrionics of Hammer horror.

For Mr. Burton that made casting a challenge. Johnny Depp and Michelle Pfeiffer, who play Barnabas and Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, the matriarch of the cursed Collins clan, knew the show, but other cast members — like Eva Green, Jackie Earle Haley and Mr. Burton’s partner, Helena Bonham Carter — did not. “I felt like I was using a kind of ‘Dark Shadows’ filter, which I could never quite verbalize to the casting director,” Mr. Burton said. “Somebody was either part of the ‘Dark Shadows’ club or not, and I could never say why. It’s something personal.”

Before the soap opera ended its run Curtis managed to crank out a couple of theatrical features, “House of Dark Shadows” (1970) and “Night of Dark Shadows” (1971), which doubtless put unseemly pressure on a cast and crew whose creative blood was already draining fast. Even with the extra narrative latitude allowed by the horror genre, the show ran out of ideas, and died a (more or less) natural death. (The entire saga, all 400-plus hours of it, will be available Tuesday in a 131-disc DVD set, boxed in an attractive coffin.) Curtis continued, through the ’70s, to put horror of some quality on the small screen. The contemporary vampire thriller “Night Stalker” (1972) remains one of the most terrifying things ever to creep into American living rooms. (“That was cool,” Mr. Burton said. “I loved that.”) The series “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” was spun off from it, and Curtis, who died in 2006 and is now perhaps best known for the “Winds of War” mini-series, also produced or directed very respectable television adaptations of several of the literary classics whose plots he had plundered for “Dark Shadows” story lines: “Dracula,” “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”

Mr. Burton chose to set his movie in 1972, not long after the original “Dark Shadows” met its timely end. “For me doing this movie was about re-experiencing that time in your life when you feel weird all the time, that age when you’re in transition from being a kid to being a teenager, and it’s all so unpleasant.”

The soap opera Curtis created, with or without the powers of darkness, helped create the culture in which a sensibility like Mr. Burton’s could thrive, and it is still, after all these years, indelibly, unkillably weird. If “Dark Shadows” had never existed, even Tim Burton might not have been able to invent it.

Dark Shadows Star Reveals What It Was Like to Make Out With Johnny Depp!

Well, for actress Bella Heathcote, she got to experience both firsthand.

So just what was it like to smooch the sexy star?

"It's surreal. He took me aside the day before we had the kissing scene and he's like, 'How do you feel about this scene? It's kind of weird,'" the 24-year-old Aussie, who portrays Victoria Winters in the movie, told E! News.

"And I was like, 'Yeah, it's weird,' and then we traded stories about awkward on-set kisses, and then you just do it and it's kind of strange and awkward because there's a whole bunch of people standing around and looking at you. But it's strange being anyone's love interest."

Although, in this case, we're guessing pretty awesome as well.

First Look: Johnny Depp stars in 'Dark Shadows'

With some fake blood on his lips, Depp bites into the role of a wronged vampire who awakens 200 years in the future to discover disco, television and microwaves in "Dark Shadows."

Depp and director Tim Burton presented footage from their remake of the 1960s TV show Tuesday at CinemaCon, a conference for theater owners in Las Vegas.

The preview shows Depp's character, Barnabas Collins, trying to get acquainted with his modern relatives, who live in his 18th century mansion. They include Michelle Pfeiffer and Chloe Moretz, who plays a bored teenager. An immortal witch portrayed by Eva Green threatens to destroy Collins' family if she can't have him.

Burton said as a boy, he used to race home from school to watch the show.

"I wasn't doing my homework. I was watching this weird TV show," he said.

Burton said he, Depp and Pfeiffer were the only people on set who watched the TV show when it aired from 1966 to 1971.

"Try to make sense of it," he said as the preview began.

Depp barely spoke as Burton introduced the movie. He appeared on stage looking like a modern Jack Sparrow, the free spirit he portrayed in Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise. He wore all black, a vest and an assortment of necklaces and bracelets.

The film begins in 1760 Liverpool, England, with the Collins family preparing to move to the New World.

After Green condemns him, Depp's vampire is found buried in his coffin by construction workers. He returns to his family home to find he is living in a different era. At one point, he challenges a neon McDonalds sign.

He vows to restore his family to its former glory, but Green's fatal attraction threatens to stand in the way.

"If I can't love you, I will destroy you and your family," the witch says.

Pfeiffer plays the family matriarch and Moretz is her daughter. Rocker Alice Cooper has a cameo. Depp declares Cooper "the ugliest women I've ever seen."

The movie is part of Warner Bros. summer lineup. It is slated to be released in May.

Depp and Burton first collaborated in 1990's "Edward Scissorhands." They also worked together on "Corpse Bride," ''Sweeney Todd," and "Ed Wood," among other flicks.

Jonathan Frid, actor in "Dark Shadows", dies at 87

Frid died Friday of natural causes in a hospital in his home town of Hamilton, Ontario, said Jim Pierson, a friend and spokesman for Dan Curtis Productions, the creator of "Dark Shadows."

Frid starred in the 1960s gothic-flavored soap opera about odd, supernatural goings-on at a family estate in Maine.

His death comes just weeks before a Tim Burton-directed version of Dark Shadows is due out next month starring Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins. Frid has a cameo role in the new movie in which he meets Depp's character in a party scene with two other original actors from the show.

Pierson said Burton and Depp were fans of Frid, who played a vulnerable vampire in one of the first sympathetic portrayal of the immortal creatures.

"Twenty million people saw the show at its peak in 1969. Kids ran home from school and housewives watched it. It had a huge pop culture impact," Pierson said.

Pierson said Frid, whose character was added in 1967, saved the show and stayed on until the end of its run in 1971. He said Frid was never into the fame and fortune and just wanted to be a working actor. He said he loved the drama and finding the flaws and the humanity in his characters.

"That's why he had this vampire that was very multidimensional. It really set the trend for all these other things that have been done with vampires over the last 40, 50 years," Pierson said. "Vampires were not in the vernacular. In 1967, there wasn't a pop culture of vampire stuff, so here he was in this mainstream network show that aired at 4 P.M. that really took off. And then he did the movie which was also a big hit."

Frid had been an accomplished stage actor before "Dark Shadows" made him famous. The show has lived on in reruns.

Stuart Manning, editor of the online "Dark Shadows News Page", said Frid brought a new dimension to the role of the vampire by injecting the role with depth and a sense of regret for his immortal existence.

"Now that idea has been taken many times since — 'Twilight' uses it, shows like 'True Blood,' 'Buffy' — which again I think shows the influence 'Dark Shadows' has had," said Manning, who worked with Frid as a writer on the 2010 "Dark Shadows" audio drama spinoff, "The Night Whispers."

The youngest of three sons, Frid served in the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War. After graduating from Hamilton's McMaster University, he got a degree in directing at the Yale School of Drama and studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.

Frid starred in various theater productions with illustrious actors including Katharine Hepburn. But it was his turn in "Dark Shadows" and its first feature film adaptation, "House of Dark Shadows," that made him a commercial success and kept him busy throughout his career with reunions, fan events and dramatic readings.

He lived in New York for several decades before moving back to Canada in the '90s. His other credits include the 1973 TV movie "The Devil's Daughter," co-starring Shelley Winters, and Oliver Stone's directorial debut, "Seizure." He also starred in the Broadway revival and national tour of "Arsenic and Old Lace" in the '80s.

Pierson said Frid been in declining health in recent months. At Frid's request, there was no funeral and there will be no memorial.

"He really was kind of a no-fuss guy," Pierson said.

Frid never married. He is survived by a nephew, Donald Frid.

Johnny Depp Remembers Dark Shadows' Jonathan Frid: "His Elegance and Grace Was an Inspiration

He took time out today to pay his respects to Jonathan Frid, the original Barnabas Collins from the Dark Shadows TV series, who died on April 13.

That was Friday the 13th, to be exact.

Depp called his predecessor, who has a cameo in Tim Burton's upcoming film, an "inspiration."

"Jonathan Frid was the reason I used to run home from school to watch Dark Shadows," Depp said in a statement obtained by E! News.

"His elegance and grace was an inspiration then and will continue to remain one forever more. When I had the honor to finally meet him, as he so generously passed the torch of Barnabas to me, he was as elegant and magical as I had always imagined. My deepest condolences to his family and friends. The world has lost a true original."

Kathryn Leigh Scott, who also starred on the original series and has a cameo in the film, wrote on her website that she is grateful to have known Frid as the "charismatic, entertaining, complex and plain-spoken man that he was."

"I won't ever forget the moment when the two Barnabas Collinses met, one in his late 80s and the other in his mid-40s, each with their wolf's head canes," she says of the day Frid met Depp on set.

"Jonathan took his time scrutinizing his successor's appearance. 'I see you've done the hair,' Jonathan said to Johnny Depp, 'but a few more spikes.' Depp, entirely in character, replied, 'Yes, we're doing things a bit differently.'"

Critics will weigh in on the new Dark Shadows, of course—but it may be the longtime Frid fans who have the last word on how well Depp and Burton honors the original Barnabas.

'Dark Shadows' actor Frid dead

Frid passed away on April 13 from natural causes at Juravinski Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario.

The actor was best known for playing vampire Barnabus Collins in '60s supernatural TV soap opera Dark Shadows, which is the subject of an upcoming big screen remake directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp in the role made famous by Frid. The actor makes a cameo appearance in the film and it was fittingly his final screen role.

Other notable credits include roles in The Devil's Daughter and 1974 horror film Seizure.

Frid's former Dark Shadows co-star Kathryn Leigh Scott paid tribute to the actor on her official website, writing, "I am so grateful to have worked with Jonathan and to have known him as the charismatic, entertaining, complex and plain spoken man that he was. What fun we had working together! He was irascible, irreverent, funny, caring, lovable and thoroughly professional, and in the end became the whole reason why kids ran home from school to watch Dark Shadows."

Dark Shadows: Sink Your Teeth Into New Pics of Johnny Depp and Tim Burton!

The chameleon actor is gearing up to hit the big screen next month as vampire Barnabas Collins in Tim Burton's big-screen reimagining of soapy '60s spookfest Dark Shadows.

We've already seen the trailer, but let's now feast our eyes on new pics from the flick, which promises to offer a mashup of Burton's macabre kitsch and Depp's signature quirk.

We can only describe Depp's Collins as the love child of Sweeney Todd and Edward Scissorhands—he's even got the razor-sharp talons, to boot!

In one behind-the-scenes pic, we see Depp and Burton chatting on set, flanked by its gothic, ominous backdrop.

The film has been a longtime passion project for the actor, who told Entertainment Weekly last fall, "I do remember, very vividly, practically sprinting home from school in the afternoon to see Jonathan Frid play Barnabas Collins. Even then, at that age, I knew—this has got to be weird." (Photo 2)

'Dark Shadows': Feast your eyes on the new character posters

Johnny Depp turns into Barnabas Collins in shades: Photo

Helena Bonham Carter is a neon-eye-shadowed Dr. Julia Hoffman: Photo

..and Bond girl Eva Green becomes Angelique Bouchard: Photo

New Dark Shadows Trailer: Five Things We Learned About Johnny Depp's Vampire Movie

The first trailer for Dark Shadows, their eighth project together but the first in which Depp plays a vampire(!), hit the world today and we couldn't wait to get a taste of just how the goth-kitsch series of the same name that ran from 1966 to 1971 has been officially Burtonized.

Aside from this quick assessment—it's the director's usual supernatural-meets-a-bygone-era meets-Helena-Bonham-Carter—here are five things we learned:

1. Boy Meets Girl: Depp's character, Barnabas Collins, was "normal" once—just your regular nobleman in love with a fair maiden in the 1700s. What could possibly go wrong?! We sure hope Barnabas' playboy ways don't get him in trouble with a witch or anything...

2. This '70s Show: Sure enough, Barnabas is cursed by Eva Green's heartbroken witch Angelique, who turns him into a vampire and buries him alive. In his coffin he lies until the distant descendants who live in his beloved Collinwood Manor dig him up in...1972! Judging by the disco-era ephemera on display like this lava lamp, Burton's going to milk the notorious tackiness of the decade for all it's worth. Also helping to set the mood: The trailer includes both Curtis Mayfield's "Superfly" and Barry White's "You're the First, My Last and Everything."

3. Old Feelings Die Hard: Angelique may have tried to condemn Barnabas "to the shadows of all time," but that doesn't preclude her from wanting to rekindle the flame now that he's undead-and-kicking. "I must admit, they have not aged a day," quips the vampire who never met a bodice he didn't want to rip.

4. Creepy Little Girl? Check! Ever since The Ring, it's been de rigueur for every horror movie (even though this is really more of a comedy) to have a freakout courtesy of a youngster with hair hanging in her face. Lucky for this film, Let Me In proved that it helps if the pale girl with the menacing stare is played by Chloë Grace Moretz.

5. Vampire vs. Predator: Sure, Barnabas succumbed to Angelique's wiles, but that was just for old times' sake! Once she threatens to destroy his whole family, even if they are the picture of dysfunction, Barnabas knows it's his job to destroy her, once and for all!

This delightfully campy-looking confection, also starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Jonny Lee Miller lands in theaters on May 11.

'Dark Shadows': Helena Bonham Carter as Dr. Julia Hoffman

Dr. Julia Hoffman is the live-in psychiatrist to Michelle Pfeiffer's Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, the family matriarch. The character has been played by a number of actresses over the years, including Grayson Hall, Barbara Steele and Kelly Hu. In the show, she was originally one of the vampire Barnabus Collins (Depp), but became one of his biggest allies.

Are you guys looking forward to this film? Have you ever seen the original show or the nineties remake? We weren't too jazzed by the first picture of Barnabus, but this one is pretty darn cute. We love Carter and we can't wait to see what level of crazy she brings to the role. "Dark Shadows" will hit theaters on May 11th, 2012.

New Soap Opera Doc Shines Light On Industry

'Dark Shadows' returns in book and movie

And while Hollywood is buzzing about the big-screen revival of the franchise with Johnny Depp starring as the vampire Barnabas Collins, in a film directed by Tim Burton, there's a new book coming in April written by Kathryn Leigh Scott, who played Maggie Evans and Josette DuPrés in the long-running soap.

Dark Shadows: Return to Collinwood written by Scott with Jim Piersonis a look back at five decades of the beloved soap opera whose popularity earned it a permanent spot in our popular culture.

"As you can imagine, this book has been crashed through to tie in with the new Dark Shadows film (in which I have a cameo role) and renewed fan interest in the original House of Dark Shadows," Scott tells USA Today.

The book's foreword is written by none other than Jonathan Frid, who created the role of Barnabas Collins. The book includes hundreds of photographs and behind-the-scenes anecdotes from the show's stars including Scott (Josette DuPrés), Frid (Barnabas Collins), Lara Parker (Angelique Bouchard) and David Selby (Quentin Collins). They all appear in cameo roles in the Burton film which, in addition to Depp, stars Helena Bonham Carter and Michelle Pfeiffer. It opens in May.

The original Dark Shadows ran on ABC from 1966-1971. Reruns and DVD releases of all 1,225 episodes have attracted new generations of fans.

Scott and Pierson have previously collaborated on five books about Dark Shadows and a coffee table book about the career of its creator, the late producer-director Dan Curtis.

Soap Life: The Docu-film

"The wife of our executive producer, John Grossman, who owns the production company NYPS, is a big fan of GENERAL HOSPITAL, and her whole thing was, 'You have the ability, so let's do something to save the soaps,'" explains producer Matthew D'Amato of how it all began. "We started doing research, and we sat down with a few actors, producers and directors, and said, 'Is this is a good idea? Could this work? Should we pursue it?' And we looked it up online and didn't see anything like this, so we thought it would be important to get started."

And the main goal of the film, D'Amato explains, is to generate enough buzz about the possible end of soaps to possibly prevent it from happening. "Hopefully this will get enough attention to help the genre, because we don't want to see it fade away," he says, adding that it's tentatively scheduled for a June 2012 release date at film festivals and possibly on networks such as Showtime. "We do want to see it at festivals, and we do want to see it on networks [so] people who aren't soap fans can watch the film and kind of relate to it, hear the stories and maybe want to pick them up or maybe do something about the genre. We have contacts we can send it to in order to get it out there, so hopefully it will get bigger and bigger!"

For more information on the project, visit www.facebook.com/soaplifedoc. To see a video about the project, visit www.youtube.com/user/SoapLifeDoc.

DARK SHADOWS to DVD

'Dark Shadows': Johnny Depp in vampire makeup - yikes!

"Dark Shadows" hits theaters on May 11th, and Depp stars as Barnabas the vampire. The film is based on long-running soap opera of the same name. One of us in the Zap2it office might have loved the nineties re-working of the show so much that she named her birds Barnabas and Victoria after the main characters, so we really want this film to be good. That makeup isn't exactly filling us with confidence.

Here's what's happening in the film. In 1752, Joshua and Naomi Collins set sail from Liverpool, England to America with their young son Barnabas. They brought with them the family curse. Two decades later and Barnabas pretty much runs the town of Collinsport, Maine. He runs Collinwood Manor, he's rich and powerful ... until he breaks the heart of the witch Angelique (Eva Green). She turns him into a vampire and buries him alive. Two centuries later, Barnabas is freed and finds the world of 1972 very different. His estate is in ruins and the remnants of the Collins family are harboring dark secrets.

What do you guys think of Depp's makeup? Are you horrified in a good way or a bad way?

Dark Shadows Movie

Helena Bonham Carter is a little worried about Dark Shadows

Hold on, hold on. No, we didn't just catch Carter trashing a movie she's in, let alone a movie directed by Burton, her partner for a decade and the father of her two kids. No, she's saying the film is so original and so complex that it's going to be hard to give it the simple peg movie marketers use to draw audiences in.

"It's very original, and it's kind of uncategorizable," she said during an interview after the Britannia Awards this week. "It's going to be impossible to sell, frankly, because ... it's a soap opera, but it's very, very subtle. I don't know. We'll see. It's a ghost story, but then it's an unhappy vampire story."

So Carter is afraid Burton's movie might fall into that category of movies that are good but so hard to categorize that audiences don't turn out. It does happen, of course. Then again, the Dark Shadows TV series had all the elements she's talking about—secrets, ghosts, vampires, romance, soap opera drama—and it managed to do well, especially with the whole vampire thing.

And if the bloody set photo of star Johnny Depp we saw is any indication, there are at least a few moments in this movie that aren't subtle at all.

So will Dark Shadows crash and burn under the weight of its own complexity, or will the big names and mere presence of vampires in this bloodsucker-crazed world be enough to make it a hit?

ALICE COOPER To Make Cameo Appearance In TIM BURTON's 'Dark Shadows'

Cooper's previous acting credits include cameos in "Nightmare On Elm Street: Freddy’s Dead" and John Carpenter’s "Prince Of Darkness".

Robert Pattinson vs. Johnny Depp: Who's the Hotter Vampire?

You may be playing a vampire in Tim Burton's upcoming horror flick Dark Shadows, but costar Chloe Moretz still thinks Robert Pattinson is Hollywood's hottest bloodsucker...

"They're two very different vampires," Moretz told us at Spike TV's Scream Awards in Los Angeles. "I'd say that Edward [Cullen] is a lot more sexy and hot, and I think that Johnny's a lot more tortured and deep."

Based on the 1960s TV series, Dark Shadows follows the adventures of centuries-old vampire Barnabas Collins (Depp) and his various run-ins with monsters, witches, werewolves and ghosts.

Fourteen-year-old Moretz plays a "fun-loving 1972 hippie" in the film who actually has to help Barnabas out in the dating department.

"He comes into my room and asks me about how to get a girl in 1972, because he's Victorian," she laughed. "He's from the Elizabethan Age, and he's a vampire. He comes in and he's like, 'How do I get this woman?'"

As for working with Depp, Moretz gushed, "He's amazing. He goes out of his way to be nice and...He makes you very comfortable on set."

Johnny Depp's true 'Dark Shadows' vampire revealed!

Last week, long-range paparazzi shots of the actor wearing ghostly white makeup, large sunglasses and a pulled down fedora made fans of the original 1966-71 supernatural soap opera bristle nervously, with complaints he looked simply too strange.

Nevermind that he’s playing a 200-year-old vampire, which is strange enough.

As you can see from this cast shot, Depp’s bloodsucking pater familias Barnabas Collins actually borrows heavily from the aged-little boy look of original Dark Shadows star Jonathan Frid — not that anyone would be happy to see this guy show up as your prom date either.

Still, this official First Look may reassure those die-hard fans of the original series, memorably offbeat ABC daytime drama about a vampire whose extended family are bedeviled by ghosts, witches, and other gothic woes.

Depp, who fought for years to make this movie, is one of those fans. “I do remember, very vividly, practically sprinting home from school in the afternoon to see Jonathan Frid play Barnabas Collins,” the actor says. “Even then, at that age, I knew — this has got to be weird.”

Weird certainly sums up this particular family portrait — a shot director Tim Burton, who also obsessed over Dark Shadows as a boy, staged in the early days of production.

“I remember seeing a group photograph of the cast of the original series,” he tells EW. “For me it captured the weird Dark Shadows vibe in a single image. I had a brief window of opportunity to have our cast present at the same time, the day before principle photography began. We decided to stage a similar picture instead of rehearsing, to see if we captured the Dark Shadows feeling.”

Here’s who those family members are, one by one.

Barnabas Collins (Depp) — He was an 18th century gentleman, a businessman just before the Revolutionary War, who was transformed against his will into a vampire and buried in a tomb for two centuries. After he finally emerges, uncovered by construction workers in the year 1972, he seeks out his descendants — as well as some long-ago foes and a possible lost love.

“He’s been alive this whole time and very hungry, with no idea what’s going on outside,” says screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith (author of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, which Burton is producing as a film.)

Barnabas is one vampire who is just as frightened of our times as we are of him, says producer Richard D. Zanuck: “Two-hundred years later, he’s suddenly walking into the town he saw being built and seeing girls in skirts, cars for the first time. It’s a man-out-of-time, supernatural horror story, but I put ‘horror’ in quotes.”

Despite his confusion, he’s still a ladies man. “In some sense he can be a terrifying killer; on the other hand, women have a weakness for him and he has a weakness for women,” Grahame-Smith says. “He can be a very well-mannered, well-meaning vampire most of the time, until his stomach is empty or someone challenges his beloved Collins family.”

Here’s that family, from left to right:

Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter) – From Alice in Wonderland’s Red Queen, to the cannibalistic cook Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, Burton can’t help but cast the mother of his children as a deranged person. This prim and proper psychiatrist, who has taken up residence with the Collins family to care for their troubled youngest boy, might seem to break that trend — but don’t bet on it. “Dr. Hoffman’s been there for years, working with David [the little boy in the photo] but not making any progress. He still claims he sees ghosts and talks with his dead mother,” Grahame-Smith says. “She’s crazy but brilliant. Obviously she’s an eccentric, and definitely likes a drink or two. She’s definitely a little bit off her rocker, and is a woman with a lot of secrets herself.” The writer teases: “She’ll also become interested in Barnabas in more than one way. “

Carolyn Stoddard (Chloë Moretz) — Though she played a voracious child vampire in the acclaimed (but little seen) Let Me In, Moretz is on the human side of the spectrum in Dark Shadows — though that doesn’t mean this cousin of young David Collins (and daughter of Michelle Pfeiffer’s character, seen on the far right) isn’t without her own peculiarities. “Carolyn is your typical early-1970s teenager,” Grahame-Smith says. “She likes her music and likes her magazines, and does not like anyone in her family. She likes to keep her door closed and keep to herself. She’s pretty normal, but appearances can be deceiving. I wouldn’t say there is a normal person in this photo.”

Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green) — The Bond girl from Casino Royale turns up here as the villain of the story. “Angelique is a witch who has known Barnabas since the 1700s, when they had an affair that went sour. She is the one who cursed him to be a vampire and locked him in that box,” Grahame-Smith says. “Since he has been away, Angelique has made it her life’s mission to destroy the Collins family. So when Barnabas turns up again after all these years, she’s not very happy to see him.”

David Collins (Gulliver McGrath) — Lonely, confused, and neglected by his pompous father (Jonny Lee Miller, over on the right next to Pfeiffer), David has no one to confide in except his bizarre psychiatrist — and the dead people he claims to see. Grahame-Smith describes him as “a sweet, curious, precocious little boy whose family has branded him as slightly crazy.” Then he finally gets a new caretaker to look after him …

Victoria Winters (Bella Heathcote) — This young woman arrives to become David’s new governess, only to find herself swept up in the vampire-witch melodrama. “When Barnabas meets Victoria, he’s instantly reminded of the woman he lost in the 1700s, before he was cursed to be a vampire,” Grahame-Smith says. “I wouldn’t say he falls in love with her, but there’s an instant attraction, an instant connection.” Is she the reincarnation of his doomed lover Josette du Pres? “We get the sense at the beginning she has a secret past, and that’s unraveled as it goes on,” the screenwriter says.

Mrs. Johnson (Ray Shirley) — “Poor old Mrs. Johnson …” Grahame-Smith sighs when talk turns to the old woman seated in the back behind Depp. “She is the mostly blind, mostly deaf maid, who has been with them for decades and decades. You might find her polishing a piece of silverware with a slab of baloney because she thinks it’s a polishing cloth. I don’t think she actually says anything in the entire film. She’s just sort of there.” He laughs: “Adding her was Tim’s idea.”

Willie Loomis (Jackie Earle Haley) — How awesome is it to play an actual Groundskeeper Willie? The Oscar-nominee for Little Children is a slightly more competent servant than Mrs. Johnson, but that’s not saying much. “He’s the guy who takes out the trash, mows the lawns, and fixes the cars, except he’s usually so drunk and so disinterested that he doesn’t take his job seriously anymore,” Grahame-Smith says. “The lawn is overgrown, the house has fallen into disrepair, and all the cars are on cinder blocks. His heart’s definitely not in the job anymore.”

Roger Collins (Jonny Lee Miller) — This scion of the once-great Collins family is one of the main reasons the aristocratic clan has fallen into such disgrace. “He’s a creepy, self-centered guy who likes to order Willie around, likes to pretend the family is still on top of his game,” Grahame-Smith says. Not only is he a bad father to David, but he is a poor manager of whatever meager wealth the family retains. “When Barnabas shows up and has some very specific ideas about how to make things right, he’s obviously going to bump heads with Roger Collins.”

Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) — The mother of Carolyn Stoddard, and mother-figure to David, she’s the one adult member of the Collins clan who is at least slightly competent. “Elizabeth is the rock of the family. She’s the matriarch,” Grahame-Smith says. “She’s the keeper of the Collins history, and a fierce protector of what remains of her family. She’s the one that insists on the best care for the children, even though money isn’t what it used to be. She’s a very strong woman who unfortunately has been dealt a very difficult deck.” With a witch perpetually trying to destroy her, and a long lost vampire relative turning up to reclaim control, “there’s just too much for her to handle,” Grahame-Smith says.

When the movie opens May 11, we’ll see how she holds up.

Johnny Depp Sports Bright White Makeup on Dark Shadows Set

Looking like the love child of Willy Wonka and Sweeney Todd's Mrs. Lovett, as styled by Edward Scissorhands, Johnny Depp slinks into his latest role, as 200-year-old vampire Barnabas Collins, shown here on the U.K. set of the film adaptation of the Gothic 1966-71 afternoon TV soap, Dark Shadows.

"There’s something about this vampire coming back after 200 years into this modern world, with a touch of the poetic, with maybe a tendency to maybe wax a little poetic now and again," Depp, 48, told MTV News earlier this year. "I have a good feeling about it. But Jonathan Frid’s Barnabas was so special."

Dark Shadows, set for release next May, will reunite Depp with his frequent collaborator, director Tim Burton, as well as his Sweeney Todd costar Helena Bonham Carter. It will also feature Michelle Pfeiffer, Eva Green, Chloe Moretz and Jackie Earle Haley – and cameo appearances by the TV version's David Selby, Kathryn Leigh Scott, Lara Parker ... and, drumroll, 86-year-old Jonathan Frid.

Bite away.

Does Johnny Depp Put Those Twilight and True Blood Vampires to Shame?

Then again, it's never really Tim Burton's intention to showcase Depp the heartthrob...

In their eighth go-round with Burton in the director's chair and Depp in heavy, pale makeup, the very biteable actor stars in Dark Shadows as Barnabas Collins, a dandy playboy who's turned into a vampire and buried alive by a heartbroken witch in the 1700s, only to resurface in the 1970s.

Culture shock!

But even though Barnabas finds all sorts of weirdos living in his family's decrepit mansion when he wakes up, at least that fedora and those glossy sideburns will translate well in the new millennium, right?

Dark Shadows is based on the gothic soap opera of the same name that aired between 1966 and 1971, featuring all manner of creatures of the ghoulish and beastly variety.

Eva Green, Jonny Lee Miller, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jackie Earle Haley and Burton muse-for-the-ages Helena Bonham Carter also star in the film, which is due in theaters May 11, 2012.

"Dark Shadows" will be Johnny Depp's next movie

The duo's collaboration has been more than three years in the making -- Depp was obsessed with the series as a child -- but Warner Bros. has now set an April start. Depp will portray Barnabas Collins, a vampire living in a Maine manor who is searching for his lost love.

Now that Depp has made his decision, the other projects he was flirting with will have to find new actors, unless of course they can be wrapped up by April. For example, Depp's name has been mentioned in connection with Kathryn Bigelow's "Triple Frontier" as well as with Universal's "Snow White and the Huntsman."

Depp and Burton last worked together on "Alice in Wonderland," one of the year's biggest hits. Depp returns to theaters on December 12 with "The Tourist."

Dark Shadows' Bright Future

According to Deadline, the picture -- which will be the seventh reunion of director Tim Burton and star Johnny Depp -- will start shooting in February.

Depp will play the vampire Barnabas Collins. He is also producing the film along with Graham King.

Author-screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) penned the screenplay adaptation of the '60s supernatural soap opera.

Warner Bros. has slated Dark Shadows for a 2013 release in traditional theaters and in IMAX.

Depp tackles vampires

Johnny Depp lurks in 'Dark Shadows'

Dark Shadows DVD Sets

• Dark Shadows: The Beginning — Collection 6" "Dark Shadows: The Beginning — DVD Collection 6" — A four-disc set packs the final 31 episodes of the show's early days, before the horror soap hit its stride with the arrival of vampire Barnabas Collins. The set also includes a restored version of the first episode featuring Barnabas.

• Dark Shadows: The Beginning — Collection 5"

• Dark Shadows: The Beginning — Collection 4" The early days of the creepy soap opera about supernatural happenings surrounding the Collins homestead continue with 35 more episodes from 1966-67 in a four-disc set.

• Dark Shadows: The Beginning — Collection 3" - Creepy life among the Collins family continues with more tales from the supernatural soap opera. The four-disc package has 35 episodes of the show from its early days, before vampire Barnabas Collins joined the cast and lifted the show to devoted cult status.

• Dark Shadows: The Beginning — Collection 2" - A four-disc set

• Dark Shadows: The Beginning — Collection 1" — A four-disc set packs the first 35 episodes of the horror soap opera that debuted in 1966, centering on a family with a dark supernatural history. This era of the cult show features episodes before the debut of the series' eventual anchor, vampire Barnabas. Also see Dark Shadows: The Beginning Collection 2

Facts

1. On Thursday, April 22, 2004 the Museum of Television & Radio paid tribute to the 40-year career of writer, producer and director Dan Curtis. Watching a clip reel of his work, one thought leapt to mind: ABC could really use this guy right about now.

   Curtis, who began his career selling "terrible" syndicated shows to local stations, did much of his best-known work for the currently beleaguered Alphabet web.

   These include the mid-1960s Gothic soap "Dark Shadows"; the mid-1970s TV movies "The Night Stalker" and "The Night Strangler" (but not the short-lived series that followed them, "Kolchak: The Night Stalker," for which "Sopranos" creator David Chase wrote eight episodes); "Trilogy of Terror," a 1975 TV movie whose most memorable segment starred Karen Black; and the mammoth 1980s miniseries "Winds of War" (18 hours) and "War and Remembrance" (30 hours), both based on Herman Wouk's World War II novels.

   Also evident in the reel was Curtis' love of filmic scope (he admitted to shooting one huge WWII battle scene several times just for the fun of it); his willingness to tackle brutal subjects such as the Holocaust head-on (as he said to ABC's standards and practices division, "Six million Jews died. You're going to worry about pubic hair?"); and his versatility. Curtis tackled everything from horror to westerns ("The Last Ride of the Dalton Gang") to serious drama ("When Every Day Was the Fourth of July") to romance ("The Love Letter").

   Among those giving standing ovations to Curtis were friends and colleagues Peter Graves ("The Winds of War," "War and Remembrance"), Dean Jones ("When Every Day ..."), Karen Black, Kathryn Leigh Scott ("Dark Shadows"), David Selby ("Dark Shadows") and John Karlen ("The Winds of War," "The Last Ride of the Dalton Gang," "Trilogy of Terror," "Melvin Purvis: G-Man," "Dark Shadows").

   Over the course of a lively Q & A, the witty, self-deprecating Curtis related how he broke into show business (golf and bravado), how "Dark Shadows" began (with a handshake); how he cast Jonathan Frid as vampire Barnabas Collins in "Dark Shadows" (from an 8-by-10, black-and-white photo that showed him in a cape); how he became a director ("I was tired of telling directors what to do"); his first reaction to adapting the Wouk novels ("It's impossible"); and his new "Dark Shadows" pilot for The WB ("It looks pretty good.").

   In May, The WB will announce whether it has picked up the "Dark Shadows" pilot, which Curtis is doing with producer John Wells ("ER," "The West Wing") and "Smallville" writer Mark Verheiden. Curtis recalled how the whole thing began back in the '60s with a dream about a girl on a train, hired to be a governess in a remote locale. By morning, the idea seemed like rubbish, but his wife liked it.

   So Curtis proposed it to ABC head Brandon Stoddard, and 40 years later, the network geared for the 12-34 demographic is bringing it back -- albeit with a much younger Barnabas, played by Scotsman Alec Newman. In a TV business run largely on fear, it's a bold, improbable move, but that's nothing new to Dan Curtis.

2. For more than a year and a half the characters of "Dark Shadows" used almost every possible phrase to refer to Barnabas Collins ("He's not alive!" "He's one of the undead." "He walks at night but he ain't alive.") It wasn't until the 410th episode that the word "vampire" was actually used on the show.

3. Producers: Robert Costello, George DiCenzo, Peter Miner, Lela Swift, Sy Tomashoff

4. Production Company: Dan Curtis Productions Inc.

5. Production Design by : John Dapper, Sy Tomashoff

6. Costume Design by : Mary McKinley, Ramsey Mostoller, Hazel Roy

7. Fashions by: Ohrbach's &Junior Sophisticates

8. Directed by: Dan Curtis, Pennberry Jones, Dennis Kane, Henry Kaplan, John Sedwick, Jack Sullivan, Sean Dhu Sullivan, Lela Swift, John Weaver

9. Art Department: Milt Honig, Trevor Williams

10. Makeup Artists: Dennis Eger, Vincent Loscalzo, Dick Smith

11. Hair Stylists: Irene Hamalin, Jack LeGoms, Edith Tilles

12. Essex, Connecticut was the locale used for the town of Collinsport

13. Dark Shadows has the distinction of being one of the few classic television soap operas to have all of its episodes survive intact except one, although a handful of early episodes are available only in 16 mm kinescope format. For the one lost episode (#1219), only a home audio recording of the episode exists. The home video version and cable reruns of this episode were reconstructed from this soundtrack, the closing scene from the episode #1218, the opening scene from episode #1220, and from video still frames sourced from other episodes.

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