Johnny Depp in a vampire's role

Friday, July 27, 2007
Warner Bros. is set to join hands with actor Johnny Depp's production company Infinitum-Nihil and Graham King's GK Films to make a film version of gothic soap opera Dark Shadows.

It looks like the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' actor will play the lead role, vampire patriarch of the series, Barnabas Collins, for he has earlier revealed his obsession for the 60s daytime supernatural show, as a child.

The ABC show was created by Dan Curtis and Depp , along with King, will produce the flick with David Kennedy, who ran Dan Curtis Prods. until he died last year. Infinitum-Nihil's Christi Dembrowski served as a point person in cracking the deal, Variety magazine reports.

Dark Shadows was considered a daring and unprecedented daytime television when ghosts were introduced about six months after it began. The series became hugely popular when, a year into its run, vampire Collins, played by Jonathan Frid, appeared. In addition to vampires, the show featured werewolves, ghosts, zombies, man-made monsters, witches, warlocks, time travel, both into the past and into the future, and a parallel universe.