Depp/Burton DARK SHADOWS Is In Production!!

Again with that obsession thing... 

somehow this plot outline makes the whole thing seem more "real". i'm quite pleased with what i've read.

frankly i can't believe we're hearing those names...OUR names...being spoken of in such a large,splashy context. our little DS world is about to expand exponentially. i'm not quite sure how to feel about all of it but i'm getting very excited.

the plotting sounds somewhat at odds with all of the "funny" remarks. i will say that i believe the decision to set the piece in 1972 allows for alot of visual "camp" in terms of the sets and costuming. otherwise i'm not sure why it's not being set in 1967 or for that matter the present. it's got to be a stylistic decision.

the descriptions of the characters...carolyn as a "rebellious teenager",roger as a "ne'er' do well"...sound alot like the characters we know in the early days of the series. i for one am pleased that vicki is being portrayed as her true self...governess,not waitress. although a small part for maggie would be nice.

sounds good.

and i agree the original barnabas was a total skirt chaser.

otherwise i'm not sure why it's not being set in 1967 or for that matter the present. it's got to be a stylistic decision.

Took me a minute, but the story starts in 1752, jumps ahead two decades to when Barnabas has the curse put on him, then jumps to 1972. He's in the coffin for exactly 200 years. Not sure WHY that decision was made, but there's the math.

I quite like the idea of Barnabas being shocked and horrified at what's become of the once-proud Collins dynasty. He wakes up to find his family tree is a tangled neurotic mess! Poor fella.

Yeah, I had noticed the math of the years too (one page back) and the numbers add up more satisfyingly, I think.  I'm getting a bit of a vibe similar to when they arrive in 1995 and find Collinwood in shambles- certainly not to that extreme but the same kind of feeling of despair. 

I think that Barnabas on the show was certainly a skirt chaser- I always got the impression in 1795 that Angelique wasn't the only dalliance- and then after he fell in love with Josette it was almost an excuse to chase everyone else because they "reminded" him of her.  But "playboy" sounds like this will be more overt than implied.  I definitely won't mind seeing Johnny put his moves on all the ladies 

My take...

1.  The story must be streamlined to fit something like forty or fifty hours into about two.  The outline sounds like it is going to accomplish exactly that.  One house instead of a complicated history of two, for example.
2.  All it takes is for Barnabas to cheat on Angelique.  Even if he doesn't think of it as cheating--any bets she'd disagree?
3.  I'm so hoping no one is a reincarnation of anyone.  Especially Josette.  It is a very old and by now boring cliche, which incidentally was nowhere present in the original series until near the end of 1897!  Victoria was not Josette remember?  Josette was a ghost, and Maggie just happened to look like Josette.  The later versions that went with this old chestnut frankly weakened the whole story.
4.  Professor Stokes is a great character--but he really has next-to-nothing to do.  Especially when Barnabas first shows up (we didn't meet him until after Vicky returned from the past, if you recall).
5.  Okay, logistics--if the Collinwood manor is something like a ruin, then for all we know Elizabeth & Company are living in a nice large modern house not too far from the estate.  Willie is probably the caretaker of the place.  Thus when Barnabas shows up, he can easily stay in his old home (and there's some lovely potential for melancholy right there btw) without anyone really noticing--at least at first.  But if he offers to restore the place, I imagine the Collins family would be pleased to let him do so.  Doesn't really take much to see how this can work.  But at the same time, you can see how some folks would always be sneaking onto the old estate, maybe smoking pot and stuff.  And if anyone were watching, seeing movement in the old place could spark rumor or action or just plain curiosity.  Lots of potential there.
6.  Personally, I think setting it circa 1970 is a brilliant idea.  If somebody showed up today and told anyone "I'm your hitherto unknown cousin from England come to stay" the first thing they'd do is do a google search.  Which in Barnabas' case would turn up nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  Same thing for a credit score.  But in 1970 someone might be able to pull it off.

6.  Personally, I think setting it circa 1970 is a brilliant idea.  If somebody showed up today and told anyone "I'm your hitherto unknown cousin from England come to stay" the first thing they'd do is do a google search.  Which in Barnabas' case would turn up nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  Same thing for a credit score.  But in 1970 someone might be able to pull it off.

Remember in 1840 Gabriel had acquired quite the dossier on Gerard Stiles!! That must've taken some doing way back then!

And just because we only know about Angelique, that doesn't necessarily mean she was the only one he slept with and then dropped flat.

That's the way I've always seen it, too. While I definitely feel that Josette was Barn's first emotional love, I doubt if he was any innocent when he took that fateful trip to Martinique. It was common enough for wealthy men in Barn's time to engage in sexual dalliances with women of a lower social status without expecting any sort of repercussions. Who knows what he was up to on previous business trips?  At any rate, the "playboy" or rogue tag of the new movie seems perfectly apt to this Barnabas fan.

The 1972 setting could really prove to be quite interesting.  From a Mad Men/period setting, it allows for a revisit of things like Watergate, the Vietnam war, the Equal Rights Amendment and the 1972 Munich Olympics as a spectator looking back at those items with the wisdom of 40 years (!) of history after the fact. 

For those fretting about the "funny" perspective, we've talked about what it will be like for a man whose last memories were from before the Revolutionary War returning to a world where Volkswagon Beetles will be driving down the road and airplanes will be in the sky and coming to grips with the post-1960's eras of free love and recreational drug use (can vampires get the munchies from drinking THC-contaminated blood?).  But think about that era, where Laugh-In and All in the Family were top rated television shows.  For that matter, Barnabas will be shocked by a television at all, let alone seeing Sammy Davis kissing Archie Bunker.  This really has a lot of interesting facets to consider...

usffan, that's just what I was going to say. The plot information we've been given sounds wonderful to me, and sounds like it fits a melodrama/thriller, not a comedy; the 1972 setting will likely be enough context to allow the inclusion of "funny" without comedy.

In regard to Collinwood, it isn't obvious to me that there's only one house. The statement "He returns to Collinwood Manor to find that his once-grand estate has fallen into ruin" could possibly mean that the house Barnabas had lived in is in ruin, and the current family is living in another house on the estate that was built later. What if, perhaps, the Collins patriarch in the mid-1800s built a large new house during the height of the Gothic Revival period? 

Pics of Chloe taken two days ago at an event she attended. Nice Carolyn like hair.
http://justjaredjr.buzznet.com/photo-gallery/417844/chloe-moretz-cleopatra-ballet-05/

I think the most interesting aspect of the synopsis is that for the first time, Barnabas is going to be the audience identification character - it really sounds like the story will be told from his point of view, which has the potential to be fascinating. No version of Dark Shadows until now has really explored the idea of Barnabas as a man adrift in a strange, unfamiliar world. That should give things a really interesting new spin, even for those of us who already know the characters and situations inside out.

Stuart, I never thought of that! You're right, the beginnings of the original and 1991 TV series had the audience identifying with a governess in transit to her employment at Collinwood, and the opening of HODS had the audience identifying with an established governess coping with her crisis du jour. This will be very, very different and a fresh, exciting new take on DS. (And the mention of the family already being curse-prone in the mid-1700s, along with the description of the Collins family household in 1972, sounds like there will be lots of fodder for future movies or a TV spinoff.)

If Barnabas wasn't a playboy how would he know what to do to cause Angelique to still want him after 200 years?

Are you subtly trying to say that Barnabas must have some exceptional, highly developed sexual talents?    

It's funny how that never seems to be discussed in fandom - but chances are extremely good that it has to be true for Angelique to still speak of "those nights in Martinique" for centuries afterward!