Tim Burton's Dark Shadows

[returntovoid]

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2011

Rick Heinrichs on "Dark Shadows"
Production designer Rick Heinrichs and Tim Burton go way, way back. Although you're certainly familiar with their collaborations on The Nightmare Before Christmas, Sleepy Hollow, and Planet of the Apes (to name a few), the two began working together as film students in the 1980s, and projects such as Hansel and Gretel and Vincent. Now, they're teaming up again for Dark Shadows.

Heinrichs spoke with Blog of Dark Shadows recently:

BLOG OF DARK SHADOWS: What are your overall feelings about becoming a part of the project; what made you say yes?

RICK HEINRICHS: I’m a fan of Tim’s movies as well a colleague and I’m delighted to be working with him again. I also love the genre of this film.

BLOG OF DARK SHADOWS: Were you a fan of the original series or the ’91 revival?

RICK HEINRICHS: I was aware of Dark Shadows growing up for the fact that a lot of kids were running home from school to watch the series in the afternoon. It seemed an odd subject to me for a soap opera. Now of course I realize the brilliance of showcasing it as a soap: the interplay of extreme emotions pouring from the different characters brought about by this courtly vampire in their midst. I also noticed that a majority of the fans seemed to be female and I wondered what was up with that. Obviously this was before I realized that the opposite sex could be romantically attracted to the doomed bad boy. Or was it bat-boy? At that time, I was looking at horror comics like Creepy and Eerie and the work of Jim Steranko and others. That’s where I first experienced the pleasure of stories that recognized the fine line between humor and horror.

BLOG OF DARK SHADOWS: Does the experience of Sleepy Hollow serve as a kind of stepping stone for this film? Of all of Tim Burton’s films, it is the one that most closely hits on the whole Dark Shadows feeling, I think.

RICK HEINRICHS: Sleepy Hollow was the story of a rational man’s journey into the irrational. We intentionally wanted Ichabod Crane’s investigation in upstate New York to have a progressively dreamlike quality ultimately leading to a nightmare. While the two movies do share certain genre aspects as well as the male lead, it’s certainly going to be a different feeling film.

BLOG OF DARK SHADOWS: Do you envision it being a challenge capturing visual elements of that show, yet updating it for the modern audience, or is it a completely different kettle of fish?

RICK HEINRICHS: It’s not a completely different kettle of fish. The reason [we're] doing Dark Shadows to a degree is to explore and relish what was great about that series and the character of Barnabas Collins, and we intend to make it a world the series’ many fans will enjoy.
Labels: dark shadows, hansel and gretel, nightmare before christmas, planet of the apes, rick heinrichs, sleepy hollow, tim burton, Vincent

POSTED BY FUZZY DUCK AT 2:36 AM 2 COMMENTS

http://tbcollectivenews.blogspot.com/

 

[returntovoid]

I'm wondering what Burton's depiction of Barnabus will look like?

It must be grotesque, I assume.

 

[DarkKnight88]

Johnny Depp says he'll be veering very close to what Jonathan Frid did and looked like.

"For me, even the conversations I've had with Tim, what Jonathan Frid did with that character and that classic look he created, I find it very difficult to stray very far from that," he told MTV. "I think it's going to be somewhere in that arena, with maybe just a couple of different touches here and there."

http://www.firstshowing.net/2011/depp-talks-about-how-hell-play-barnabas-collins-in-dark-shadows/

 

[returntovoid]

Dark Shadows should be a good change from Burton's children's novel adaptations and musical like Sweeney Todd. I think it could get back to the style of his early films from 1988-1999.

 

[Pfeiffer-Pfan]

Yeah... I definitely feel a Sleepy Hollow vibe from this.

This should give Burton the opportunity for his best film since Big Fish (Even though I thought Sweeney Todd was excellent).

 

[DACrowe]

Sweeney Todd was brilliant because he never made a movie like it before. And he pulled from German expressionism from the 1920s and the earliest Universal horror of the 1930s. Dark Shadows may be a return to his '90s films, but in all honesty he has only tried to really challenge himself twice in the last decade....Big Fish and Sweeney Todd. Sweeney was his second masterpiece (after Ed Wood). It's too bad that only once in a blue moon he challenges himself. But I liked the show as a kid when Sci-Fi played it in the afternoons as ancient reruns and Burton doing a vampire movie should be fun.

 

[Pfeiffer-Pfan]

Eva Green on Dark Shadows...

http://tbcollectivenews.blogspot.com/ (First post)

It’s always dark and poetic with Tim Burton. It’s a mixture of Sweeney Todd and Beetlejuice—back to his old roots. But he wants to focus more on the actors this time and the relationships. It could almost be a play.

If Michelle Pfeiffer definitely does this movie then consider me super super pumped. Time for some classic Burton.

 

[Bim]

Consider me looking forward to this one

 

[Pfeiffer-Pfan]

Looks like Michael Sheen is eyeing a role in Dark Shadows...

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Michael-Sheen-Enters-Talks-For-Tim-Burton-s-Dark-Shadows-23877.html

If you haven't already been aware of it, Tim Burton has a habit of casting a lot of the same people in his movies. It's the reason Johnny Depp has been in seven of his movies and Helena Bonham Carter has been in six. Last year Michael Sheen took on the part of the White Rabbit (albeit voice only) in Burton's Alice in Wonderland, and now the director has him coming back for round two.

The Playlist has learned from unnamed sources that Sheen is now in talks to join the cast of Dark Shadows, Burton's film adaptation of the 1960s gothic soap opera. Should he sign on, he will be part of a project that already includes the aforementioned Depp and Bonham Carter, Jackie Earle Haley, Eva Green, Bella Heathcote, and Michelle Pfeiffer (who is working with Burton for the first time since Batman Returns). It's unknown what role he would be playing. The film is scheduled to begin shooting next month and will be released in 2012.

Sheen is really a joy to watch in anything, so you're not going to be hearing any complaints from me about who he's playing, regardless of the character. Who knows, maybe he'll strap on his Tony Blair suit again.

 

[Pfeiffer-Pfan]

I'm just going to keep bumping this... t:

More cast updates:

We have our young Johnny Depp and Hit Girl (potentially) joining the cast... as a young Barnabas Collins and Carolyn, the daughter of Elizabeth Collins Stoddard.

Heres the info:

http://tbcollectivenews.blogspot.com/

 

[Pfeiffer-Pfan]

Release date: May 11th 2012

Sooner than I expected... t:

And no Michael Sheen.

 

[mongoose-mania]

So excited for this movie. Luckily Netflix has all the episodes of the original series so I can get familiar with it before the movie comes out. I can't wait to see how Burton's going to handle the story.

 

[Incrediblejeff]

I watched the movie House of Dark Shadows,and I have to say I'm kind of interested in this now.

 

[mclay18]

Tim Burton + Bruno Delbonnel = all sorts of promising.

Of course, some Michelle Pfeiffer goes a LONG way too.

 

[DACrowe]

I watched the movie House of Dark Shadows,and I have to say I'm kind of interested in this now.

Ah that was fun because it was shot on 35mm (or how underlit it was, maybe it was 16mm?) with the same actors on real locations. But the plot was a hammy version of a modern-day Dracula B-movie with a few Dark Shadow elements thrown in (lost, reincarnated love, vampire cure and....well that's about it). I hope Burton's Dark Shadows movie tries to ambitiously adapt plot elements or themes (as the plot is so convoluted and soap opera-ish) into the movie rather than taking a Hammer film and streamlining it for the Dark Shadows brand.

I watched the show when I was sick as a kid on Sci-Fi (long before it was called Syfy) hours-long morning blocks. So, I'm fuzzy on the details the basic plot of the show was:

A large, rich and eccentric family lives in the gothic manor of Collinswood in the conveniently titled Collinsport, Maine. Despite being set in the mid-to-late 1960s (when the show was made) it had the gothic appearance of Wuthering Heights or the like. A crazy New England townie named Willie (Jackie Earl Haley) finds a hidden coffin and unearths Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp), a 200+ year old vampire. He immediately enslaves Willie and regains his strength by eating the Collins' governess. The Collins have two children, an adult blonde daughter (the strangely non-adult Chloe Moretz) and a little boy (uncast?). The boy is watched first by hired governesses Maggie and later by Victoria (unknown starlet in movie).

Both of these replacement women become Barnabas's objects of desire and the show usually revolves around him tormenting/courting one of them. Maggie he kidnapped, tortured and brainwashed to be his lost love Jossette and then to make Baranabas softer, the writers had him court Victoria/Vicky and turn her into Jossette after Maggie left the show. We learn from her ghost she committed suicide to escape Barnabas 200 years earlier who tried to vampire her. We slowly learn that afterwards Barnabas instructed his father to kill him, but instead his father chained him in a coffin because he couldn't kill his son. So, 200 years later freed, Barnabas pretends to be a long lost cousin and spends most of the show either attacking the family (he went after/enslaved the blonde daughter so much she might as well have been a Plasma ATM machine) or protecting them from ghosts, witches, werewolves and the likes.

That is the basic set-up of the show. The most typical plot devices they'd recycle is.

-A female scientist (Helena-Bonham Carter) became Barnabas's confidant and is constantly trying to cure him. She'd periodically succeed, but he would revert to a vampire when the witch who cursed him out of spite from rejection 200 years earlier, Angelique (Eva Green), would return from the dead to vampire his ass again.

-Barnabas and Vicky time traveling to the 1790s where the locals were always trying to burn Vicky as a witch (she talks about the future too much) and Barnabas is always killing superstitious folk and playing a battle of wits with Angelique. Most memorably he buried alive behind a brick wall the reverend who tried to burn Vicky in a great scene that I hope they reuse somehow in the Burton movie (even if they skip the time travel). One of these times Angelique escapes to the 1960s and finally Vicky stays with some guy she fell in love with in the 1790s and leaves Barnabas alone.

-A distant cousin named Quentin coming to Collinsport and, like Barnabas, lapsing in and out of werewolf curse while courting blonde daughter when she isn't Barnabas's late night blood call.

-The little boy finding always new ghosts in the manor or estate who lead him into danger from which Barnabas and/or Quentin must save him.

-More time travel to different eras (I quit taking sick days around this time, so I don't know where that led).

....Anyway, those are the key elements of the show I recall and I hope they can incorporate reverend burying, witch cursing (Eva Green being cast is a good sign) and vampire curing/recursing into the plot and not just give us Bram Stoker's Barnabas like the original Dark Shadows film.

That was fun, I haven't really thought about that show's details in at least a decade.

 

[Incrediblejeff]

I have put this on my radar hopefully Burton does well.

 

[Man in the Suit]

Filming begins this week on Warner Bros. Pictures' and Village Roadshow Pictures' Dark Shadows, which brings the cult classic television series to the big screen under the direction of Tim Burton. The film's all-star ensemble cast includes Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green, Jackie Earle Haley, Jonny Lee Miller, Bella Heathcote, Chloe Moretz, and newcomer Gulliver McGrath.

In the year 1752, Joshua and Naomi Collins, with young son Barnabas, set sail from Liverpool, England to start a new life in America. But even an ocean was not enough to escape the mysterious curse that has plagued their family. Two decades pass and Barnabas (Johnny Depp) has the world at his feet—or at least the town of Collinsport, Maine. The master of Collinwood Manor, Barnabas is rich, powerful and an inveterate playboy…until he makes the grave mistake of breaking the heart of Angelique Brouchard (Eva Green). A witch, in every sense of the word, Angelique dooms him to a fate worse than death: turning him into a vampire, and then burying him alive.

Two centuries later, Barnabas is inadvertently freed from his tomb and emerges into the very changed world of 1972. He returns to Collinwood Manor to find that his once-grand estate has fallen into ruin. The dysfunctional remnants of the Collins family have fared little better, each harboring their own dark secrets. Matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) has called upon live-in psychiatrist, Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), to help with her family troubles.

Also residing in the manor is Elizabeth's ne'er-do-well brother, Roger Collins (Jonny Lee Miller); her rebellious teenage daughter Carolyn Stoddard (Chloe Moretz); and Roger's precocious 10-year-old son, David Collins (Gulliver McGrath). The mystery extends beyond the family, to caretaker Willie Loomis, played by Jackie Earle Haley, and David's new nanny, Victoria Winters, played by Bella Heathcote.

Burton is directing and producing Dark Shadows from a screenplay by Seth Grahame-Smith, story by John August and Grahame-Smith, based on the television series created by Dan Curtis. Also producing are Oscar® winner Richard D. Zanuck (Alice in Wonderland, Driving Miss Daisy), continuing his long association with Burton; Oscar® winner Graham King (Rango, The Departed), continuing his collaboration with Depp; Johnny Depp, Christi Dembrowski, and David Kennedy. The executive producers are Chris Lebenzon, Nigel Gostelow, Tim Headington, and Bruce Berman.

The behind-the-scenes creative team includes cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, Oscar®-winning production designer Rick Heinrichs (Sleepy Hollow), Oscar®-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood (Alice in Wonderland) and editor Chris Lebenzon (Alice in Wonderland). The score will be composed by Danny Elfman.

Dark Shadows is being filmed entirely in England, both at Pinewood Studios and on location.

Dark Shadows will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company, and in select territories by Village Roadshow Pictures.

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=77724

 

[Pfeiffer-Pfan]

Good things always come out of Tim Burton shooting at Pinewood Studios...

consider me excited.

The cast and crew on this is immense. t:

 

[flickchick85]

Tim Burton + Bruno Delbonnel = all sorts of promising.

OMG, this is the first I'm hearing about Delbonnel's involvement, and honestly, that excites me more for this project than the admittedly awesome cast. Talk about a dream collaboration of director and DP that I didn't even know I wanted to see 'til now, lol.

This is the first Burton project I've been excited about for a looong time.

 

[Crockett]

Yep, it's going to see the results for the collaboration between Burton and Delbonnel, this along with the good premise and a equally good cast Burton managed to round up makes me really excited for the movie. It's great that it started filming this week too.

 

[The Shape]

I would love to see Tim Burton work on an original project that doesn't scream "Tim Burton".

 

[Spider-ManHero12]

^^ Like what?

 

[dark_b]

^^ Like what?

what original work?

 

[Octoberist]

Hey the movie isn't 'in' 3D?

 

[dark_b]

forced Depp and Burton is worse then forced 3D