Dark Shadows Production Delayed Until Early Next Year Says Producer Richard Zanuck
In an exclusive interview with Movie Web, veteran producer Richard Zanuck noted that production of the Johnny Depp/Tim Burton movie version of the horror soap opera Dark Shadows probably won't take place until early 2011.
"It's unlike, while everybody intends to make the picture, and we're still working on the script and all the rest, it's unlikely that we can start it earlier than the beginning of next year," Zanuck says of the film that will star Depp as vampire Barnabas Collins. "Johnny had committed and he has to do Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides first. He had a long-standing, firm, unchangeable contract to do that. That's a big project and he doesn't start that until later in the summer. So there you have it and we're waiting in line."
Besides noting that the story would feature Barnabas, he said, "One of the problems we've had with the script is that there are hundreds of episodes of this and boiling it down to an hour and a half or two hour movie with one story has been a real challenge and that's what we are doing now. But it will have all of the elements of the TV show. It won't be high camp, obviously. It won't be soap opera, which the show was. No, it will be scary, it'll be very funny and it will carry the Tim Burton stamp of uniqueness."
EDITOR'S NOTE: If anyone has Burton's ear out there, please let him know that Dark Shadows was never "very funny." It may have been unintentionally campy, but it was in no way comedic, and that kind of approach would be disastrous.
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