Roush on Dark Shadows, Johnny Depp and House Of Dark Shadows
Question: I am ambivalent about hearing that
Johnny Depp is going to play Barnabas Collins in a new theatrical version of
Dark Shadows. I am sure that the movie will bring new blood into the franchise, but I don't think
Dark Shadows is a good fit for the big screen.
Dark Shadows has always been a long, continuous saga with many characters and storylines, and I don't believe you can simply make a two-hour
Dark Shadows movie, no matter how great an actor Johnny Depp is. Do you believe that
Dark Shadows is better suited for the big screen or the small screen?
— James, Staten Island, NY
Matt Roush: Given that the last few attempts to remake
Dark Shadows as a prime-time series failed (a short-lived remake on NBC and an aborted comeback on the WB), maybe a starry big-screen homage is the way to go. Besides, the original series spawned two movie spin-offs in the early '70s:
House of Dark Shadows and
Night of Dark Shadows. I can't pretend to be objective about them, having seem them in my early teens (if that) as an unabashed Collinwood junkie. (Haven't seen them since, so for all I know, they're actually awful.) But as long as you capture the ambience of the
Dark Shadows mythology and tell a good story with the right cast (Johnny Depp is a great start), I don't see why this would be any more off base as a potential movie franchise than something like
The X-Files. But is the premise of
Dark Shadows better suited for an open-ended serialized drama? Absolutely. For now, though, that doesn't appear to be in the tarot cards.
