As you may have noticed, the
trailer for the upcoming Burton lead Johnny Depp film,
Dark Shadows, does not have a great many similarities to the original series.
Tim Burton tells the LA Times that while he enjoyed watching the show growing up, it’s “awful.”
“It’s a different animal,” Burton said. “If I go back and watch something like
Star Trek, it’s not that hard to analyze what the appeal was, and even if the show is dated you identify what it was that made it work. The
Dark Shadows appeal was a little more abstract. What I loved about it was the fact that it was a melodramatic soap opera, and, well, that flies in the face of any modern studio’s interests as far as moviemaking. But what we’ve gone for is a mixture, and that’s always what I’ve been interested in; I think most of my movies are mixtures of light and dark and serious things and things that have humor in them.”
Burton has the right to feel this way, but if he was hoping to bring in actual FANS of the original program... This is not going to work.