Depp And Burton Creep Into DARK SHADOWS

Variety is reporting that Tim Burton is directing an adaptation of the 1960′s daily show DARK SHADOWS and will star Johnny Depp as the vampire Barnabas Collins. Woo-Hoo!! I wonder who will be cast in the roles of the witch Angelique, the werewolf Quentin, Doctor Hoffman and Professor Stokes? Forget TWILIGHT…this supernatural show used to be on when kids got home from school in the afternoons – good times!

Warner Bros. is ramping up a feature version of the supernatural soap opera DARK SHADOWS, set up with Johnny Depp and Graham King’s GK Flms. Studio’s signed Seth Grahame-Smith, who penned the novel “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” to pen DARK SHADOWS. Depp is only attached as a producer at this point.

Grahame-Smith’s already attached to adapt “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” for Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov at Universal. The history-horror hybrid book, which details Lincoln’s secret battle with the undead, hit shelves in March and portrays the 16th president as a highly trained vampire assassin.

Depp had obtained feature rights DARK SHADOWS in 2007 from the estate of Dan Curtis, the producer/director who created “Dark Shadows.” The series aired on weekdays on ABC from 1966 to 1971 with 1,225 episodes.

Warner Bros. hasn’t set a release date yet for the big-screen version of DARK SHADOWS. But the project was included as one of the 20 films covered in a deal — announced in late April — between Imax and Warner Bros. to release up to 20 Warner films in Imax’s format over the next three and a half years through 2013.

Source: Variety