Regardless of what era the film takes place, it's definitely going to interesting to see how they play up the whole Barnabas dealing with a world that's centuries beyond the world he knew. But with regard to that I keep coming back to something Jim Pierson said when he brought the whole subject up, and that was that in the talks they were having back when he was interviewed in November, they weren't planning on getting "too cutesy with it" and that it was simply going to be "something that humanizes the character." That doesn't seem like it's going to be played for laughs. Well, at least not the sort of laughs that I would expect people to describe as very funny. But who knows? Things could have changed after Pierson's interview...
And I could also see the film having some sort of retro feel/look to it even if it does take place in our time. Though if the characters are sort of in their own world and if they do continue to dress in some sort of vintage fashion, one can only hope that that would simply be used for tone and not for humor as, say, it was in the
Brady Bunch films...
And speaking of the film possibly being retro -
Helena has reportedly stated that it will be set in the '70s, though I cannot find a source to verify this information.
Do you remember where/from whom you heard this? Not that I'm doubting that you did, but like you I cannot find a source - not in any of the linked articles Goggle sends me alerts for, not with several search criteria permutations I've tried using to search on my own. Normally comments like that will show up on multiple Web sites because sites are constantly swapping/referring to other sites and other sources of information. It's extremely odd for it to seemingly be untraceable.