I love dark films, so I hope it'll be pretty dark. I do hope that they will find some humanity... er... is that the right word for an undead creature?
But Johnny nearly always gives even his most evil characters (Sweeney Todd, Sands from Once Upon A Time In Mexico, Armacost from The Astronaut's Wife) something to like about them, and I feel (hope) he will draw upon Barn's tortured past.
3 films is an awful lot for one year, especially in terms of Pirates, since the first 3 films took so long to shoot. But by all accounts, The Tourist will be a "small" film, and Pirates is scaling back from the mega-effects of the sequels. Technically, Johnny did 3 films in 2008 (Parnassus, Public Enemies, and Alice In Wonderland) so it can be done. Maybe that's why he needed the break this fall (though he has kept himself busy- he's directed a couple of music videos and played guitar on an upcoming album, and also making deals for more future films
)
Seems to me that King's remarks are all in line with what we've heard during the year about DS. Johnny had said the script was "very, very close", and he tends to be very polite, so what I had taken from that was that it still needed a bit of tweaking, so it's good that they are doing that. He also said "toward the end of next year" in one interview. Still, isn't it a sigh of relief to finally hear something solid?