Johnny Depp and Tim Burton Talk 'Dark Shadows'

Posted July 31, 2009, 6:00 am   •   by Betsy Waldman   •   20 comments

Robert Pattinson is about to get some competition in the hot-vampire department.

Frequent collaborators Johnny Depp and Tim Burton are gearing up to film a big-screen version of the mid-'60s soap opera Dark Shadows, featuring Depp as the vampire Barnabus Collins, and the two have been letting details about the project drip out in various interviews lately.

Depp tells Collider.com that playing 175-year-old vampire Collins has been "a lifelong dream for me," ever since he became infatuated with the show as a child. "I was obsessed with Barnabas Collins," Depp recalls. "I have photographs of me holding Barnabas Collins posters when I was five or six."

Burton, meanwhile, dished to the Los Angeles Times about his own impression of the original series. "It had the weirdest vibe to it. I'm sort of intrigued about that vibe," Burton noted.

As for the public's enduring interest in vampire stories, Burton theorizes, "It's like any great fable or fairytale, it's got a power to it...There's something symbolic about it that touches people in different ways."

At this year's Comic-Con, Burton said that he hopes to begin work on Dark Shadows as soon as he's finished working on his Alice in Wonderland remake—which also stars Depp, as the Mad Hatter. If the timing works out, who knows? Dark Shadows might even go up against Breaking Dawn, the final installment in the Twilight saga.

That would definitely give vampire fanatics something to sink their teeth into.

Let us know in the comments section: Do you think Johnny Depp will make a sexier vampire than Robert Pattinson?