The 'net was ablaze with stories (okay, ablaze in my neck o' the 'net at least) about Tim Burton directing, probably with Johnny Depp starring in, a big screen version of everyone's favorite Gothic cult soap opera from the 1960s/70s, DARK SHADOWS.

My reaction is: "Why?"

Not Why Burton and Depp?" but simply "Why?"

Believe me, no one loves the TV show more than I. (I even love it so much I've gone back and corrected a couple of typos I've found in this post, which I'm often too rushed to do.) I love the cheesiness, the cheapness, the horrible acting (somebody please throw some water on the irreplaceable Grayson "Julia Hoffman" Hall), the amazing (often flubbed) dialogue, the wild plots. When it's bad, it's incredible fun, and when it's good, it's even more fun.

No one can capture that on the big screen, but that's not my issue with the proposed film. I'd be very happy with a serious, straight version.

My problem is that I don't believe you can do a film that is really a film version of DARK SHADOWS. The films they released during the run of the show back me up - they try to include a ridiculous amount of plot and back story in them, because they're trying to compress storylines that took weeks or months into a 2-hour running time. (Granted, it could easily be 3hours, but that's not really sufficient time.) Sure, those storylines were padded beyond belief, but they still are hard to condense without leaving out key moments and/or characters, the absence of which will cause fans to scream and protest.

Of course, Burton could do the film as being only "inspired by" the series, the idea of a vampire returning to his "family" after 200 years. And I think it's possible, if he and the writer(s) give themselves a tremendous amount of freedom, that they can come up with a good film.

But it won't be DARK SHADOWS (in the same way that the Eddie Murphy DR. DOLITTLE movies have absolutely nothing to do with the original Hugh Lofting stories.)

I have for many years wanted someone to revive the series as a series, but not as it was done in the 1990s when they just retold (at a much faster pace) the old storylines. I've always wanted someone to do a new DARK SHADOWS which simply takes up 35 years or so AFTER the old one ended. The characters have all aged in real time (except Barnabas and Quentin, presumably). I'd love for them to dispense with any explanation of what has happened over time and just jump in in the middle of a great storyline, letting us find out gradually over the course of weeks what happened since 1971.

Anyway, my thoughts. Maybe Burton and company will surprise me, which would be delightful (if it even gets done in the first place). But I'm pessimistic.