If you’re familiar at all with Johnny Depp, you’ll know about his love of the 60’s Gothic show Dark Shadows. He’s said that as a child he was so obsessed with it he wanted to be Barnabas Collins – the 175 year old vampirical main character of the show.
Now he can be.
Deadline reported that production on Dark Shadows is currently slated to begin in April, but Depp was also attached to star with Tom Hanks in the Kathryn Bigelow-helmed Triple Frontier, which is scheduled to shoot in February. So now he’s dropping out of that project to concentrate on re-teaming with Tim Burton for the 6th time, and the chance to play one of his dream roles.
Dark Shadows is being written by Seth Grahame-Smith (writer of the Abe Lincoln Vampire thing), who has 1,245 episodes from the daytime soap he can use for inspiration. The show was highly melodramatic, had bad effects, over-the-top music and campy storylines.
Naturally it was great, and has had a huge influence on a wide variety of things from movies to TV to vampires. You’ve got to figure Burton and Depp will aim for the same tone they achieved in Sleepy Hollow (maybe darker), and while I’m sure everyone is sick to death of vampires the chance to see Depp play out a fantasy from his childhood is going to be near impossible to resist.