Director Tim Burton and star Johnny Depp go together like peanut butter and jelly, like smoke and fire, like whiskey and Coke.  Their efforts together began with Edward Scissorhands, and now, twenty-two years later, their eighth collaboration is about to hit theaters from sea to shining sea.  That would be Dark Shadows, and to most audiences, the new film is likely a whole new quantity, a mixture of garish, gothic visuals and a comedic sensibility.

But Dark Shadows is, in fact, a theatrical update of the creaky soap opera created by Dan Curtis in 1966.  The series, which followed the exploits of the highly dysfunctional inhabitants of Collinwood Manor, has maintained a passionate cult of die hard fans devoted to the characters, particularly the vampire Barnabas Collins, originally played by Jonathan Frid.

In the new version, Depp plays Barnabas, a wealthy gentleman in the Colonies just before the Revolutionary War who is cursed with vampirism and buried alive for two centuries.  When he's unearthed in 1972, he naturally returns to his home and finds his descendants presiding over the dilapidated Collinwood Manor.  Depp leads a cast that includes Eva Green, Jonny Lee Miller, Helena Bonham Carter, Bella Heathcote, Chloe Grace Moretz, Gulliver McGrath, and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Joel Amos from Moviefanatic.com was on hand for the film's press day, where cast, along with Tim Burton, writer Seth Grahame-Smith, and composer Danny Elfman discussed the influence of the original series, soap opera acting, being part of an ensemble, and the film's unique tone.

Very early in a new video featurette on Dark Shadows, Michelle Pfeiffer begins, "The Collins family is," before pausing briefly and concluding, "odd."  Pfeiffer plays Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard, the matriarch of a highly dysfunctional family inhabiting the ancient, dusty old Collinwood Manor.  Every member of the family, and indeed a few characters who aren't official family members, get their moment in this new three-minute featurette.

Synopsis: In the year 1752, Joshua and Naomi Collins, with young son Barnabas, set sail from Liverpool, England to start a new life in America. But even an ocean was not enough to escape the mysterious curse that has plagued their family. Two decades pass and Barnabas (Johnny Depp) has the world at his feet--or at least the town of Collinsport, Maine. The master of Collinwood Manor, Barnabas is rich, powerful and an inveterate playboy...until he makes the grave mistake of breaking the heart of Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green). A witch, in every sense of the word, Angelique dooms him to a fate worse than death: turning him into a vampire, and then burying him alive. Two centuries later, Barnabas is inadvertently freed from his tomb and emerges into the very changed world of 1972. He returns to Collinwood Manor to find that his once-grand estate has fallen into ruin. The dysfunctional remnants of the Collins family have fared little better, each harboring their own dark secrets. Matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) has called upon live-in psychiatrist, Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), to help with her family troubles. Also residing in the manor is Elizabeth's ne'er-do-well brother, Roger Collins, (Jonny Lee Miller); her rebellious teenage daughter Carolyn Stoddard (Chloe Moretz); and Roger's precocious 10-year-old son, David Collins (Gulliver McGrath). The mystery extends beyond the family, to caretaker Willie Loomis, played by Jackie Earle Haley, and David's new nanny, Victoria Winters, played by Bella Heathcote.

The upcoming theatrical revival of Dark Shadows is indeed a comedy, but as a new minute-long international TV spot makes abundantly clear, it is very much the Johnny Depp show.  International Movie Star Depp plays Barnabas Collins, a role originated by the recently departed Jonathan Frid, and though Dark Shadows is populated by all manner of odd characters, it's clearly the vampire Barnabas who has the run of this particular show, a comedic update of the television series that ran from 1966-1971.

It's the end of the week, and Warner Bros is kindly offering four official images from Dark Shadows, the comedically-inclined theatrical update of the gothic 1960s soap opera created by Dan Curtis. 

Two of the stills, the first and last, are familiar, as we've previously seen lower quality scans of both.  The middle two are all new, though.  One gives us Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins, posing in front of a painting of himself, while the other is actually a behind the scenes look at total BFFs Depp and Tim Burton.

Last week, a series of character posters promoting Dark Shadows desaturated the color in the faces of the film's major characters and plopped those faces in front of poppy, colorful backgrounds.  Now, a new set of character banners again gives all the players their chance to shine, but this time they're all shown from head to toe.  There's still that interplay between the bright colors and gothic colorlessness, though, as well as the tagline, "Strange is Relative."

After a long time releasing stills at a snail's pace, Warner Bros. is really putting the word out there on Dark Shadows all the sudden.  The week before last the studio finally dropped a theatrical trailer, then last week we saw a slew of poppy character posters highlighting the ensemble cast, and now we've got a TV spot.  Said TV spot includes a surprising amount of footage not included in the trailer, most of it naturally focused on Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins.

Last week, Warner Bros revealed the first theatrical trailer for Dark Shadows, Tim Burton's update of the 1960s-1970s soap opera created by Dan Curtis.  The trailer showed that, instead of being a gothic slog, the film is instead a surprisingly colorful 1970s-set comedy with no small amount of eccentricity.  Today, the studio followed up with nine character posters, one for every member of the sprawling ensemble cast.

As promised earlier this week, the first theatrical trailer for Dark Shadows premiered somewhat inexplicably today on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, showing up online just a few hours later.  Aside from a tiny three second snippet, this our first real look at director Tim Burton's cinematic update of the cult soap opera created by Dan Curtis in 1966.  Like you'd expect, it includes plenty of Johnny Depp, with the big ensemble cast almost exclusively reacting to his vampiric Barnabas Collins.

After months releasing naught but images from the film at a steady trickle, Warner Bros. is properly kicking off the hype machine for Dark Shadows.  With the May release date rapidly approaching, the studio will release the first theatrical trailer tomorrow, Thursday March 15th.  In advance of that, though, our very first look at footage has emerged online, along with a new banner image from the official site of Tim Burton's take on the creaky 1960s soap opera.