Michelle Pfeiffer has kept her distance from the big screen in the last few years.    She’s making up for it in 2011 with a number of big projects, one of which will reunite her with Tim Burton.

According to The Heat Vision, Pfeiffer is in talks to join Dark Shadows as family matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard.

Elizabeth locks herself in the Collins mansion after her husband dies, and like all good New English matriarchs, harbors all kinds of weird and dark secrets.   There’s a vampire and a witch in the family, so her stuff is fairly minor in comparison.

No one plays fragile and tinged with madness quite like Pfeiffer used to, so this should be fun if they can work out the schedules.   Don’t think too much about how she’s now playing motherly roles for Burton as opposed to the leather clad catwomen.  It’s sad. It happens to us all.

Much to the surprise of no one, Deadline reports that Helena Bonham Carter has nabbed a role. She’ll be playing Julia Hoffman, the psychologist and blood disorders specialist who befriends Barnabas.   That’s a relatively low key part, and should escape most rants and raves about how so-and-so would be better.

I’ve said it before and I’ll happily say it again: Dark Shadows has a good, good cast.  I know better than to get my hopes up, but I just can’t crush them enough.