Production on director Tim Burton’s upcoming adaptation of the popular classic US soap opera Dark Shadows is really starting to ramp up. Deadline reports that Thomas McDonell (Disney’s upcoming Prom) has now signed on to play the young Barnabas Collins, the classic vampire character set to be portrayed by Johnny Depp.
The cast is certainly coming together, with Jackie Earle Haley, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green, and Bella Heathcote already signed up and Michael Sheen currently in talks to play Elizabeth Collins Stoddard’s (Michelle Pfeiffer) conniving brother Roger.
The need for a young Barnabas is due to the backstory between Depp’s Collins and witch Angelique (Green). In the original 1960s soap, Angelique was a powerful witch who in the 18th Century used witchcraft to try and lure Barnabas to marry her. However after Collins discovered what she’d done, he shot her, and she then cursed him by luring a vampire bat from hell to turn him into a bloodsucker!
The duo then become stuck in a bit of a love-hate relationship, which over the course of the show’s 1245 episodes took all sorts of twists and turns. Presumably McDonnell will be key to this backstory, while Depp will take over for the main part of the film.