Since there's news today that Johnny Depp and Tim Burton will make a big-screen version of the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, I think it's appropriate that the TV show premiered on this day in 1966. It ran for around 25,000 episodes. It's weird to think about what this show was, a soap opera that happened to include vampires, werewolves, creepy mansions, and thunderstorms. I was mesmerized by this show as a kid. The theme is still haunting, and forget Barnabas Collins. I was freaked out by Quentin just sitting in a chair, staring ahead into the air. And those sideburns!

Here's the color opening from the late 60s/early 70s.

We've kind of been conditioned to have lowered expectations when a TV show makes the jump to the big screen. It's usually an iffy proposition at best. For every Mission Impossible, The Fugitive, or The Untouchables there is a Bewitched, Wild Wild West, or Starsky & Hutch. With that in mind, I was a little hesitant when I got the email from a friend announcing that Dark Shadows was headed for the silver screen. That one could go wrong in so many ways. But then I clicked the link he sent along...

According to our friends over at Cinematical, the rights to the show now belong to Johnny Depp's Infinitum-Nihil production company. And now comes news that Tim Burton has signed on to direct the movie adaptation. It's a short, and quite logical, jump to finding Depp playing Barnabas Collins. It also doesn't hurt the argument that when asked about the possibility of doing this film during the Sweeney Todd press junket, Depp said, "If that comes to fruition, that's a dream come true, man. Barnabas Collins - when I was a kid I wanted to be Barnabas." Depp, Burton, and Dark Shadows have all the makings of a great movie.