The burden of being Tim Burton.

Remembering an interview Daryl Hall once gave where the subject of music superstars who wanted to hire Hall and Oates to produce their records came up. Hall referred to these unnamed singers as "....vampires who want to vampirize your sound.". And there's Tim Burton, enough of a brand name to be hired to Burtonize projects such as the 2001 PLANET OF THE APES, SWEENEY TODD (which was genuinely good, along with the under regarded CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY)) and ALICE IN WONDERLAND. During the past decade, there was also BIG FISH, which I'd like to think of as producer Richard Zanuck encouraging Burton to make an uplifting, non macabre, Oscar-friendly project. And there's the unevenness of DARK SHADOWS, where Burton was apparently expected to treat Dan Curtis' gothic TV/film franchise as THE ADDAMS FAMILY--given Burtonesque treatment by Barry Sonnenfeld two decades ago. What now exists in my short-term memory: Johnny Depp's heroic gravitas, the waste of Helena Bonham Carter (in a role changed from strong female on the TV series to comic lustful drunk) Chloe Grace Moretz and Michelle Pfeiffer, Bella Heathcote looking like a character from Burton's stop-motion and CGI-animated films come to life and Eva Green gamely maneuvering all the film's shifts in tone. Somewhere, the ghost of Dan Curtis weeps as Tim Burton continues a two-film artistic slide which will hopefully end (UPDATE 10/18/12: The slide did end, with FRANKENWEENIE turning out as Burton's best post-SWEENEY TODD film, but suffering at the box office due to being the last in a threesome of animated horror comedies out this summer and fall--and perhaps paying for the sins of DARK SHADOWS too.) with this fall's animated remake of a short film called FRANKENWEENIE (the original was made when Tim Burton was considered subversive and relatively avant-garde by the standards of 1980s Hollywood).

Tim Burton explains for you why DARK SHADOWS is being served with a twist of parody.

For those who don't keep up too often with THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, Geoff Boucher is the designated chronicler of all things Fanboy-friendly.

So, here's an excerpt from his talk with filmmaker Tim Burton on what looks to be Burton's Barnabas-meets-BEETLEJUICE take on Dan Curtis' gothic DARK SHADOWS (a durable property which became a daytime soap from 1966-71, two theatrical films in 71-72 and a short-lived prime-time series in 1991).

Boucher and Burton discuss the appeal of the daytime version.  Let's join Burton here--highlighting and bracket comments by me:

"It's a different animal," Burton said. "If I go back and watch something like STAR TREK, it's not that hard
to analyze what the appeal was, and even if the show is dated you identify what it was that made it work.  The DARK SHADOWS appeal was a little more abstract.  What I loved about it was the fact that it was a melodramatic soap opera, and, well, that flies in the face of any modern studio's interests as far as moviemaking [unless it's a recently-generated source of material such as the TWILIGHT books/films].  But what we've gone for is a mixture, and that's always what I've been interested in.  I think most of my movies are mixtures of light and dark and serious things and things that have humor in them. [what Burton is really saying is that old, unfamiliar TV series now get greenlighted as movies if they're played for laughs a la 21 JUMP STREET--but not in their original form]."