I can’t tell you how excited I am to hear the news that the new Dark Shadows movie starts filming this week! I used to race home from school as a kid to watch the classic soap opera, but more often than not it scared the bejeezus out of me (and it scared a friend of mine so badly that her mom forbade her to watch it). The show also produced two theatrical films – unheard of in that time – House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows. The first film was fairly faithful to the soap … except it killed off the main reason the show was so successful: Barnabas Collins, the first sympathetic vampire to be portrayed on television. The second film, in its current form, is pretty unwatchable but there have been rumors floating around for years that a director’s cut was in the works. With creator and director Dan Curtis‘s passing in 2006, that project seems to have fallen into limbo.
The show was resurrected in 1991 and pretty much condensed the entire run of the soap’s storyline into twelve episodes. The show was extremely enjoyable and Ben Cross made for a more menacing Barnabas than original star Jonathan Frid, but the new series had the bad fortune to premiere the day after President Bush (the first) launched the Gulf War and the show suffered a series of delays and pre-emptions from which it could never recover.
The WB tried to again bring the show back from the dead in 2004. From all accounts, it sounds like it could have been very interesting but it had too many forces working against it including Dan Curtis, who hated it because it wasn’t “his vision.”
And now, after years of rumor and innuendo, a dream is coming true for a big budget, big screen version of Dark Shadows. That itself is enough to make the project interesting, but the fact that the film is being directed by Tim Burton with a cast that includes Johnny Depp as Barnabas, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green, Johnny Lee Miller and Chloe Moretz is making my head spin! Set your clocks and mark your calendars for May 11, 2012 when Barnabas Collins will rise once more!
*Comic-Con Update — It has been confirmed that four original cast members will have cameos in the movie: Lara Parker (Angelique), Kathryn Leigh Scott (Maggie Evans/Josette), David Selby (Quentin Collins) and … Jonathan Frid, Barnabas Collins himself! Wow wow wow! This is amazing news!
Clacked by Chuck Duncan 
on May 18, 2011 @ 19:03 EST5EDT
