WB ORDERS FILMING OF NEW DS PILOT

I find your response to be highy offensive and uncalled for.

That wasn't my intent, jimbo. I'm sorry if you took it that way.

I'm sure DCP does inform Marcy in a timely fashion. My only point was that sometimes it might take more time than we or even she would like before she has a chance to send news out.

Sorry for the confusion. 

Understood MB. Thanks. Sorry if I over re-acted a bit. No one can expect Marcy to be waiting at her computer 24 hours a day, seven days a week waiting to hear from DCP. Marcy is the best.
Peace.

i'll risk getting jumped on here but am i the only one not excited about this
maybe because i was thrilled the last time in 1991 but just feel that somehow this will be messed up too Just MHO!i also can't get past Blair Brown with John Belushi in Continental Divide. it was on the other day!

jennifer

Hey Jennifer, no, you're not alone in being less than thrilled with all this.  I personally have adopted a wait and see attitude about all of it.  Given the talent they're raking in for it, I'm becoming morbidly curious about just how awful it might be.  It could turn out to be an unintentionally hilarious send-up, particularly with "Molly Dodd" as Liz and "Muad-dib"as Barnabas, especially if they are using the script posted on Barnabas-Undead.  Ever imagine DS with Keno and IHOP jokes?  Well, fasten your seat belts.

And who knows, maybe the Frog Fromage crew will surprise us all and create something more exciting than we could ever have imagined!  I must confess that I don't hold out much hope for the latter.  I saw more than I would have cared to of the WB's hatchet job on Tarzan (my housemate became addicted to that thing), and I shudder to think of 9 weeks of something along these lines with a DS label stuck on it.

G.

especially if they are using the script posted on Barnabas-Undead.  Ever imagine DS with Keno and IHOP jokes?  Well, fasten your seat belts.

I'm confused (which isn't necessarily a rare thing  ) - you keep referring to the script that was posted on barnabasundead - do you mean that at one point a full script was posted there? When I checked that site a short while after it came into being, all I ever saw were casting sides, which were posted with the disclaimer that they may not have been actual scenes from the script (I even posted here on the forum that we shouldn't necessarily read too much into them because Ben Cross had auditioned for the '91 series using a scene that was taken straight out of the hoDS script), as well as a list of descriptions of certain scenes that said such and such happens here and this and that happens there - at least half of which have been taken down - and all of which carried a similar disclaimer that they might not have been a part of the actual script. Did I miss something? (Not that I would have actually wanted to read the entire script because that would have ruined way too much for me.)

i'll risk getting jumped on here but am i the only one not excited about this

No, Jennifer...you are NOT the only one.

Technically, I think what was posted on the BU site was a "treatment" rather than a script.  It contained a lot of dialogue, which of course could all get changed (let's pray devoutly for that consummation).  It was posted I think about a week after the "sides" that were used for the auditions.  Parenthetically, the "sides" included [spoiler]a scene similar to that in hoDS in which Julia confronts Barnabas at the Old House and offers him the possibility of a cure.  IIRC, that scene was not part of the pilot script, so presumably the "sides" included material from future scripts.  I don't think Julia is introduced in the pilot, which may be why her casting has yet to be announced.[/spoiler]

Trust me, darling--the treatment stank.  But I have to say it was par for the course for what I"ve seen of Angel, Tarzan, and Charmed on the WB, not to mention the later seasons of BTVS--all of which stank in my opinion, but have their fans...

G.

I have to say it was par for the course for what I"ve seen of Angel, Tarzan, and Charmed on the WB, not to mention the later seasons of BTVS--all of which stank in my opinion, but have their fans...

Yes - and count me among those Angel and BtVS fans. In fact, for me, BtVS' 6th season easily ranks among its best. But then, you and I have disagreed on Buffy. For instance, you see Marti Noxon as something akin to the anti-christ    while, with the exception of  "Bad Eggs" (which I readily admit was dreadful) from the 2nd season, I love every ounce of her contributions to BtVS (and Angel). In fact, some of Noxon's episodes - "Beauty and the Beasts" (from the 3rd season) and the sublime "The Wish" (also from the 3rd), just to name two - rank as some of my all-time favorite BtVS episodes. If the WB DS could come anywhere close to producing episodes of the level of say, "The Wish," I would be in DS heaven - and on that I know I'm not alone here. 

i also can't get past Blair Brown with John Belushi in Continental Divide. it was on the other day!

I've never seen the film, but the making of it is discussed extensively in Bob Woodward's Wired, which I read several months ago mainly because I found a copy at a used bookstore for a dime and because Saturday Night Live interests me, though I'm not a huge fan of Belushi.

It was kind of striking to read about an SNL actor who envisioned himself as playing a Cary Grant, romatic lead type role in this film when the project was presented to him early on and hoped to use it as a springboard to do more "serious" work. Obviously, the film ran into all sorts of bumps, and this is not what it turned out to be.

Flash forward twenty years, and we see fellow SNL alum Bill Murray get an Oscar nomination for Lost in Translation and hear the ongoing discussion of how this was "the role of a lifetime" for him and his "one shot at an Oscar," and he comments himself that the nomination is bittersweet because he recognizes that some of his SNL mates who are no longer around never got this opportunity though they definitely wanted it.

It makes it all the more disappointing that Continental Divide turned out badly.

I checked her age on the IMDB to make sure, and according to her birthdate listed there, February 15, 1951, she is indeed old enough at 53!

Really? I had no idea.

Brian Presley

I know who he is (I watched PC). He's an excellent young actor - and has the two Daytime Emmy noms to prove it (don't remember if he ever won one, though).

Yep --  like, when Jane Seymour was in "Live and Let Die," that was in 1973 so that was 31 years ago -- ack!!

Cool you were into PC!  (I still miss it!  Sniff! )  Yep, he's a good actor (not to mention cute!  LOL!)  Nope, I don't think he ever won an Emmy.

I would never say any of us {wastes} our posts here. lol
Thanks for that post anyway. I see you gave it a great deal of thought and time. Thanks.

You're welcome, Jimbo.  Thank you for saying so!

It makes it all the more disappointing that Continental Divide turned out badly.

She wasn't bad in it. it was just he was miscast with her. he really wasn't the romantic type
and he could not pull it sorry to say he'll always be Bluto!
have to check to see what else she has been in!

jennifer

Hey Jennifer, no, you're not alone in being less than thrilled with all this.  I personally have adopted a wait and see attitude about all of it.  Given the talent they're raking in for it, I'm becoming morbidly curious about just how awful it might be.  It could turn out to be an unintentionally hilarious send-up, particularly with "Molly Dodd" as Liz and "Muad-dib"as Barnabas, especially if they are using the script posted on Barnabas-Undead.  Ever imagine DS with Keno and IHOP jokes?  Well, fasten your seat belts.

between you and me still there will only be one Chris J
(and yes I know i missed his birthday but i was sick in the hospital
so Happy Belated BDay to him )

jennifer

These quotes come from the "But What About The REAL Dark Shadows?" topic, but I figure my response is probably better served here:

Most of all I'm sorry that they seem to have chosen to "remake" DS....rather than expand upon the original concept, as they did with Star Trek's "Next Generation".  I've never in my life seen a remake that did justice to the original version of anything.  Maybe that's just MY issue, and not the fault of what I'm looking at...but there it is.  I really don't think I WANT to see a re-creation of Willie Loomis.  What's the point?  Show me someone completely different being Barnabas' minion.....and make me forget the original.

Of course, we still know very little about the WB DS (the barnabasundead.com items notwithstanding, which all carry disclaimers that they might not even be from the "real" script), but what we *might* be getting with it is more of a reimagining of DS than a true remake. That's the way things were with the '91 series. Yes, many plot points were repeats of what had first happened on the original ABC serial - but much of it wasn't. Probably one of the biggest plot departures was that Barnabas didn't marry Angelique, he actually did kill her (though accidentally in a struggle (no let's torture your little sister for this Ang)), and he wasn't attacked by the "bat" (which, in what I've always thought was one of the best reimaginings on the series, was at first "disguised" as Josette!) until after Angelique had been buried in the woods. And as for character: Roger's background was different (he was an artist), Maggie's was different (she was a psychic), Vicki was different (she was not the clueless doormat of the original - she actually figured things out - she stood up for herself - and she was all the more interesting for it), and Willie was VERY different (he was hardly the hustler we knew, but a drunken shell of a man, who, after his "encounter" with Barn, was used more for comic relief than anything else - and to great effect, I might add). When it came to Willie, with the exception of having released Barn, almost everything about his involvement in the storyline was completely different from the original because Vicki, not Maggie, resembled Josette, no one was ever kidnapped by Barn, and Barn and Vicki's romance played out similarly to the way that it did on the original series at the point Original Willie was already locked away in Windcliff - so that necessitated new material for him. (Though no one was sorry to see the references to the cow mutilations go.  )

Now, given that an actor like Matt Czuchry and not a character actor like Jim Fyfe has been cast as Willie this time around, I'm guessing most of the changes they made for Willie in the '91 series will not be repeated in the WB DS. But it is fairly likely that Willie's story will play out very differently than it did on the original for the probable fact that the action should take place again at a point in the original story when Willie was nowhere around...

all the "stuff" that's been leaked out isn't doing anything to make me believe it's going to work for me personally.

Personally, I take what's been "leaked" with a grain of salt. Knowing how someone like, say, Joss Whedon loved to leak false info regarding both Buffy and Angel plots to keep the fans off the real track, who's to say anything that's been "revealed" on the barnabasundead site is going to be the way things actually play out? Only time - and a lot of patience - will tell. 

Given the nature of the show, which has a lot of mystery and suspense with cliffhanger endings, if they repeat the same story, they would lose almost all of the initial "built-in" audience.  They could have it mostly the same with a few new twists, but even that might not retain those who know what's to happen.

While from the casting it would seem that it's the same basic situation, I would have to assume that they've come up with some drastic story changes.