I missed you too, Taeylor!   I haven't heard anything about the cast signing contracts, but that's an interesting question.  If not, maybe if this film is successful they can try to get a commitment before proceeding on any future films.  I know that Zanuck has said something about a franchise, but I haven't actually heard that from Depp or Burton, but we'll see!  Re. the 5 movie Avengers contract, I hadn't heard that but that is quite a commitment!  Especially considering that most of them probably signed contracts for their own stand-alone films.  Yikes.

For what it's worth, tonight is the Rum Diary premiere at the LA County Museum of Art.  I'm not sure if there will be any red carpet interview snippets of Johnny, but we'll see!

A bunch of twitter posts point out that Johnny's been doing a bunch of interviews today, so again, while The Rum Diary may be the main focus, cross your fingers for some DS content as well!

Ryan Murphy definitely watched DS. He mentioned that as part of his American Horror Story presentation for the Television Critics Association back in August.  

Ah, that's great and it makes sense then that he'd mention the show.   But I also thought his comment was very interesting-- that maybe if DS had been on for longer, the concept of having 2 different people playing one role, as how they are perceived differently by the other various characters, is definitely an idea that would've fit right in with DS.

Edited to add- I'm so glad that AHS got great ratings last night!  Hopefully this bodes well for the future of the show and for interest in the horror genre!

I plan to watch this as well, and I'm really looking forward to it!  I watch a couple of shows on FX, Justified and Sons of Anarchy, and I can confirm that they do show sex and violence-- much more than is usually seen on network TV.  I'm trying to think of instances of actual nudity, and that is probably rare, other than maybe a bare tush now and then, at least for the two shows I mention.  But the language is definitely R rated- F-bombs and S-bombs and the like are common and uncensored.  So any who may be upset by these things may want to heed MB's warning. (Luckily for me, I have a potty mouth, so I'm fine    )

ETA- Robot Quentin, I was a huge fan of the old American Gothic series, as well!

Well, I guess I had better clarify that I never meant to imply that there wouldn't be a need for CGI in the film.  I'm just thinking there'll be less, relatively speaking.  Alice In Wonderland was filmed nearly *all* in front of green screen (other than the beginning and end), which is very atypical for Burton.  So that must've required an extreme amount of post production.  If DS is more like Sweeney Todd, there will be CGI where needed, but they will try to achieve many effects using real tricks (such as for spurting blood all over the place, which they loved to do in both Sleepy Hollow and Sweeney Todd   ).  'Course, I didn't realize that the Empire article didn't actually say what the IMDb posts said it said (thanks MB for pointing that out), so I could be wrong in my comparisons.  But I'm hoping that whatever CGI tinkering they'll need to do will be easy enough for them to fit into their time frame-- also, just a guess but they could well already be working on the effects for the scenes they've already filmed.

I haven't had a chance to read the Empire article yet but look forward to reading it later.  I'm really excited about what I've heard so far!

Like!

Why must they do that to the Willie character??!

Do you mean his appearance, or the character description (or both?)  At first, my reaction was to hope that they won't turn him into too much of a buffoon.  But at least in terms of his appearance, as I thought about it, I realized that first of all, that's what Jackie Earle Haley looks like, anyway, so of course the character is going to look a little off-kilter.  The hairstyle is pretty much what a lot of men were wearing in the 70's- parted on the side and a bit long, with the long sideburns.  He looks a little like a seedier version of Tony Orlando    I still hope he won't be a buffoon, but I'm okay with my first impression of his look.

Trying to catch up on several pages of discussion so I apologize if I'm repeating anything.

First, blastr.com gives some more background info on this photo-- as several people have suggested, the similarity to the cast photos from the original series is totally intentional.  Also, the photo was apparently taken the day before filming started.

http://blastr.com/2011/09/1st-official-dark-shadows.php

While it's possible that the timing is in reaction to the response from last week's paparazzi photos, I tend to doubt that's the case.  As someone mentioned, magazines usually prepare features like this weeks in advance.  Even if Johnny's production company or WB tried to pressure Entertainment Weekly into publishing official photos more quickly, Entertainment Weekly has not always catered to Johnny or Tim in the past, and I just don't think they would bend to the film industry like this- they have a magazine to publish and I just can't see them catering to every film's needs or wants.  I believe that I and others mentioned that for Tim's movies, the first official photos tend to leak out toward the end of filming, or slightly after filming ends, so this is right within that general time frame.  I do suppose it's possible that the photo release could've been moved up a little bit, but not much.  (Edited to add- another point I just thought of is that in the past, when the official photo(s) did surface from one of Burton's films (or even other films, for that matter), they are often not in conjunction with a magazine feature but just distributed directly to comingsoon.net or a similar site.  So they could've done that if they had wanted to).

About Johnny's ears, I agree, having studied the man's face quite extensively over the years   that his ears don't usually stick out that much.  I do recall Johnny discussing his Ichabod Crane character for Sleepy Hollow-- initially, he wanted to look like the character described in the original story, with ears that stuck out, a long nose, and long, gangly fingers.  He was pushing for prosthetics but Tim nixed the idea at the time.  I kind of see this look as a kinder, gentler version of that, such that Barnabas would still be handsome but maybe a little gangly.  

I do hope that a high resolution version of this photo will surface soon.  Knowing the Depp community, they will be combing all sources feverishly to find one.  

In general, I am beyond thrilled at the look of this, and I can't wait to see more!

Cathy