A film called Dark Shadows opened last week. It shares the same name and a number of characters with a cult soap opera from the late 60s, early 70s. Both feature time-tossed vampires who join their descendants 200 years in the future. However, the film plays the story as a wacky fish-out-of-water comedy while the soap opera, which was campy because, well, it was a soap opera with a production budget of $5, portrayed the story as a somber Gothic romance.

This week, Battleship opens. It shares its name with a Milton-Bradley board game that was first introduced in 1943. The game is advertised as a game of naval strategy where players try to sink each others armadas first by guessing location of ships on a grid. The film, which was based on the game, features the U.S. Navy combating a sea-based alien invasion force.

Now, this won’t be the kind of post that criticizes Hollywood for their lack of originality. Hollywood has always adapted  works from other media for the screen. That is not necessarily a bad thing. To prove my point, let’s take a look at the Top 10 films on the 2007 version of AFI’s “100 Years…100 Movies” list.

Now, you can argue semantics about this list all night–this film should be higher, that one lower, this film included, that one not–but we can pretty much all agree that these are great films. What do we see here? We have five films based on novels or plays (The Godfather, Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, Vertigo, and The Wizard of Oz), four films based on or inspired by the lives of real people (Raging Bull, Lawrence of Arabia, Schindler’s List and Citizen Kane, which was a fictionalized account of William Randolph Hearst’s life) and one inspired by Hollywood’s history (Singin’ in the Rain). Not one wholly original, but great films nonetheless.

But those were adaptations done right. Unfortunately, Hollywood has the nasty habit of wanting to put their own stamp on properties they adapt, usually with not-so-good results. And Dark Shadows and Battleship take this habit to a dangerous and puzzling new level.

Now, I’m not naive as to think that every original work should be adapted to the screen with no changes. I realize that it would be impossible for eight seasons of a TV series, 300 pages of a novel, or 200 issues of a comic book to be squeezed into one two-hour movie. But doing a good adaptation means keeping the stuff that works, keeping the same tone and characterization, and if you are going to change anything, change it to the better. The problem lies in the fact that the film studios definition of better doesn’t really end up as being better.

This problem, unfortunately, is nothing new. Studios have been making changes to classic works from other medium for decades. Whether it be modern literature, like The Bonfire of the Vanities (Does the journalist need to be British? Why can’t it be Bruce Willis? And does Sherman McCoy have to be such a erudite jerk? Why can’t he be nice, like Tom Hanks? And why have spot-on, social satire? Wouldn’t broad comedy be better?), classic literature like The Scarlet Letter (You know what would make kids pay more attention to the book in school? If Hester diddled herself in the tub.), comic books like Jonah Hex (What? The character is basically the cowboy antihero archetype that led Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson to stardom? That will never work in films. Give him superpowers, have him stop an anacronistic weapon of mass destruction, and, please, make it campy), or video games, like Super Mario Brothers (You know who the best actors to play a pair of Italian plumbers would be? An British Cockney and a Latino American! And Dennis Hopper playing their turtle nemesis! It’s like printing money!), more than one film adaptation was ruined by studio’s “improvement.” But Dark Shadows and Battleship take these kind of changes to an entirely new, and dangerous level.

Dark Shadows is the latest example of a film trying to present a property that is loved by a large, cult audience while having the studio, or, in this case, the director put their own stamp on the project. But what it really is just an unnecessary form of this type of marketing.

While I don’t deny that Dark Shadows does have a following, the fans of the show are not exactly in the 18-35 demographic that make films a hit. It was before my time and I’m way out of that demographic.

And, really? Do you need help marketing a movie where Tim Burton directs Johnny Depp again? You could have kept the fish out of water/man out of time plot, you could have even kept the main character a vampire,  you could have kept the premise the same and not have it tie into Dark Shadows at all and people would most likely still have come to see it.

The real reason that the film is called Dark Shadows is because Tim Burton was a fan of the series and wanted to do his own take on it, a take even he knew that fans of the TV show wouldn’t like. I’m sure Burton probably sold the idea to studios using the TV shows built in fan base. But this was Burton co-opting an existing property for his own use when he could have, and should have, created something original that would have still allowed him to say what he wanted to say. Dark Shadows fans have a right to be upset.

The case with Battleship is even more absurd. It’s not really a case of an adaptation being screwed up by Hollywood, because, really, if there was any way to adapt that particular board game, it would probably an even worse film than this one.

One of the producers of this film is Hasbro, the toy company that bought out Milton Bradley and owns the rights to G.I. Joe, Transformers and, you guessed it, Battleship (And Candy Land, which also has a film in the works). What happened was that Hasbro saw how much money they could make on films with the first two properties, so they decided to make a film out of every piece of intellectual property they own, whether making it into a film made sense or not. Personally, I cannot wait for Easy-Bake Oven: The Movie.

Battleship, like Dark Shadows, is a film that could have been released under another name and still do probably the same amount of business. Also, like Dark Shadows, the demographic of the source material will probably not follow it to the big screen even it was an exact representation of the game. What we have here is a generic alien invasion flick with the twist that the invasion takes place at sea.

Yes, rumor has it that there will be a scene in the film that mimics the gameplay of the original game, and I’m fairly certain that at some point in the film we will see a character, most likely Liam Neeson’s, pull a pair of binoculars away from their faces, squint off into a point just past where the camera was placed, and utter with grim, steely reserve, “They sank my battleship” (or some variation there of). But other than that, the film could have been called Aliens At Sea and it would not have made a bit of difference, except that it would have been mocked slightly less in the press.

So this is what the state of the film adaptation is today. The source material is reduced to a name only, a name Hollywood can use to practice a new kind of originality. The names become tools for directors to work out the issues they had with the original source or companies to earn a quick buck from their intellectual property in by any means necessary. Hollywood has always been accused of not caring about the books, TV shows and comics they adapt. At least now, they are being honest about it. And they get to have the best of both worlds–a film with a recognizable public image that is an “original” creation by the Hollywood establishment.

Unfortunately, this trend will not stop here. By now we should all be familiar Michael Bay’s Ninja Turtles, which every one from Bay to co-creator Kevin Eastman have promised fans of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would deliver “everything that made [them] become fans in the first place.” Everything except the characters being Teenagers (they will be a bit older) or Mutants (they’re aliens). They couch these changes as “building a richer world,” as if the world that made the Turtles a pop culture phenomenon for thirty years wasn’t rich enough.

And you thought Demi Moore writhing in a bathtub was bad.

1. Dark Shadows (Warner Brothers, 3,755 Theaters, 113 Minutes, Rated PG): So, if you are as old as I am, you’ll remember the kerfuffle over Tim Burton’s being named director of Batman. I spoke on it a bit here, but the gist of it was that comic book fans were afraid that Burton, known mostly for comedies, would be delivery a comedic version of Batman to the big screen.

He didn’t. He delivered a serious take on the character, albeit one with splashes of humor. It was a great film and made many a fan put their trust in Burton as a director.

A lot of that trust might be lost now, as he brings us this adaptation, which takes the unintentionally campy soap opera and turns it into a full-blown comedy farce. I’ll speak more about this on Tuesday, especially how it relates to the state of the modern film adaptation, but I’d imagine fans of the original sudser are experiencing now what Bat-fans in the late-80s only feared. They shouldn’t worry too much, though. The Avengers is going to stomp all over it this weekend.

Jonathan Frid, the vampire who set generations of fans’ hearts fluttering as the charismatic Barnabas Collins on the 1960s soap opera Dark Shadows, died this past April 14, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada it was announced last night. He was 87.

Although the show did not start out as a daytime drama with a supernatural bent when it premiered in 1966, Dark Shadows‘s producers began adding such things as ghosts about six months into its run. But it was the addition of the character Barnabas Collins, a vampire member of the Collins family who had been imprisoned in a tomb for two centuries, and Frid’s mesmerizing performance that really served to boost the show’s rating. The series was so popular that it spun off the movie House Of Dark Shadows in 1970. Although the film did well enough to spawn a sequel, Night Of Dark Shadows, Frid declined to participate citing fears of being typecast into the role.

Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Frid was primarily a stage actor with the Dark Shadows series being only one of two forays into television. The other was the 1973 made-for-TV film The Devil’s Daughter. His only other feature film work was in Oliver Stone’s 1974 directorial debut Seizure.

Alongside his former Dark Shadows co-stars Kathryn Leigh Scott, Lara Parker and David Selby, Frid had filmed a cameo for director Tim Burton’s big screen adaption of the series starring Johnny Depp which opens next month.

The first trailer for director Tim Burton’s big screen adaption of the cult 60s Gothic soap opera classic Dark Shadows has been released, and I think it is going to annoy most of the original series’s fans. Going by this trailer, Burton has turned the sudsy story of an 18th century man (Johnny Deppp) cursed by a spurned lover to become a vampire only to be entombed for two centuries before being re-released in the late 20th century into what appears to be a wacky fish-out-of-water/man-out-of-time comedy. For comparison’s sake, I’ve included in the trailer for the first of the two Dark Shadows films that were spun off from the original series featuring the show’s original cast.

I’m of two minds on this. On a purely visual level, it is definitely a step up from the muddy and dreadful looking Alice In Wonderland. But tonally, outside of the trailer’s first 40 seconds or so which seems to nail what the film should be like, it looks like a complete misfire. Is Warner Brothers marketing just pulling out some isolated comedic moments in order to try to sell the film as Johnny Depp playing another goofy character a la the Pirates Of The Caribbean series or has Burton decided to go the same route that the recent big screen Green Hornet and 21 Jump Street films did and take something that was done fairly seriously and turn it into a comedy? If that is the case, then as a Green Hornet fan, Dark Shadows fans out there have my sympathy.

Dark Shadows stars Depp, Eva Green, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jonny Lee Miller, Chloe Grace Moretz and Jackie Earle Haley. It opens on May 11.

I have to admit that I wasn’t that impressed with the first photos we got of Johnny Depp in makeup as Barnabus Collins in Tim Burton’s big screen adaption of the 1970s gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, but I was willing to set aside my reservations until we got something a bit more official. Well, today French film site CineHeroes posted a much more polished picture of Depp and I have to say… I’m still not entirely convinced that the look is right for the part. Check it out below.

I’m sure I’m not the only one here finds that this picture makes Depp look like a 12-year-old, more Pugsley Addams than 200-year-old vampire. Personally, I prefer the picture of Depp and co-star Michelle Pfeiffer that showed up on an Italian site earlier this week. You can’t even tell that it is Depp.

Click each photo for a bigger version.

Dark Shadows hits theaters May 11.

Via Coming Soon.

1. Puss In Boots (Paramount/Dreamworks, @3,800 Theaters, 90 Minutes, Rated PG): Of all the characters from Shrek that could have been spun off into their own film, I suppose Puss in Boots would be the most obvious choice.

In case you know nothing about the twisted, fairy tale world of Shrek (and by now, you are probably the only one), Puss is a mercenary cat voiced by Antonio Banderas who has a strong sense of honor and the ability to gain the upper hand over his foes through sheer cuteness.

This film will act as a prequel to the character’s first appearance in Shrek 2, showing the path Puss took that led him to the point of accepting the contract on Shrek‘s life.

In a small bit of trivia, this film was originally scheduled to open next week, but was moved up. That doesn’t often happen, especially with computer animated films. That could be a good sign.

2. In Time (Fox, @3,000 Theaters, 109 Minutes, Rated PG-13): High-concept Sci-Fi films are a box office crap shoot. Some become hits that spawn multiple sequels (ala The Matrix). some bomb in the theaters only to become cult favorites on the home video markets (ala Blade Runner), some are just unmitigated disasters (see Waterworld). Often, quality plays little into what makes these types of films successful or not (although it probably played a role in Waterworld‘s failure).

This film has a fairly interesting high-concept–humans stop aging at the age of 25, only to die a year later. They can stave off their demise by buying more years–which has become the currency in this society. The rich become immortal and the poor live short pathetic lives. Justin Timberlake plays a man who unexpectedly comes into a great number of years–which cause him to be investigated by the totalitarian police force that monitors this sort of time transfers.

Director Andrew Niccol directed another high concept sci-fi film, Gattaca, which was a well made examination of a world where class distinction was based on genetic perfection. It died a quick death at the box office. Hopefully the same won’t happen here.

3. The Rum Diary (FilmDistrict, @2,100 Theaters, 120 Minutes, Rated R): Johnny Depp appears to be a man who thrives on familiarity. He has made seven films with Tim Burton (and an 8th, Dark Shadows, is well on its way). He’s made four with Gore Verbinski (five if The Lone Ranger ever gets made). And then there’s Hunter S. Thompson.

Depp became friends with Thompson after playing the author in 1998′s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Depp dedicated 2004′s The Libertine to Thompson’s memory, and now he is bringing Thompson’s novel to the screen in this film.

The story involves a journalist working in 1950′s Puerto Rico who has bizarre adventures with the other Americans living there at the time.

Last week, some set photos of Johnny Depp as the vampire Barnabas Collins in the upcoming Tim Burton film Dark Shadows leaked online. Taken out of context as they probably were, they were met with some skepticism and not a few jokes about Depp’s extraordinary pale look. Perhaps in response to that, Warner Brothers has released the first official cast photo from the production to Entertainment Weekly. We should note that EW is owned by Time Warner so it’s not hard to imagine how they got the scoop.

Anyway, click on the picture below for a bigger look at from left to right Helena Bonham Carter as Dr. Julia Hoffman, Chloe Grace Moretz as Carolyn Stoddard, Eva Green as Angelique Bouchard, Gulliver McGrath as David Collins, Bella Heathcote as Vitoria Winters, Johnny Depp as Barnabas, Ray Shirley as Mrs. Johnson, Jackie Earle Haley as Willie Loomis, Jonny Lee Miller as Roger Collins and Michelle Pfeiffer as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard.

If you’re wondering about the costuming, you should know that the film is set in 1973, ironically, the same year that the original Dark Shadows daytime soap opera on which the movie is based ended.

The studio synopsis is as follows (some spoilers)  -

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 Brouchard (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.

Last night, the first photos of Johnny Depp as vampire Barnabas Collins in director Tim Burton’s adaption of the 1970s gothic horror soap opera Dark Shadows surfaced.

As you can see, he appears to be heavily mad up, which has caused some folks to snark that he looks like a variation of his character from Charlie And The Chocolate Factory or a goth Michael Jackson. I’d point out that while the pictures aren’t very encouraging, I would hold off on passing strict judgement on Burton’s look for the character until we get to see some actual footage from the film. The makeup we’re seeing here could be something that needs to be exaggerated for various filming purposes or it could be down to something plot related, i.e., some really heavy sunscreen that allows Barnabas to be out during the day.

Dark Shadows also stars Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green, Jackie Earle Haley, Jonny Lee Miller, Bella Heathcote, Chloe Moretz and Gulliver McGrath and is set for a May 11, 2012 release.

If you’ve been wondering what storylines from the five year run of Gothic horror soap opera Dark Shadows were being adapted into director Tim Burton’s big screen version, wonder no further. As a way of announcing the commencement of filming on the project this week, Warner Brothers has released an official synopsis of the film, below. Please note that it can only be described as spoilerish.

I think it is interesting to note that the “modern day” portion of the film is set in 1972, the year following the cancellation of Dark Shadows by its network ABC. Also, given the original series’ use of time-travel and flashbacks, I don’t expect things to be as linearly told as the outline below.

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 Brouchard (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.

It seems to be a truism that if you’re an actor who has worked with Tim Burton once, you have a good chance of working with the director again. Today we have learned that the director is hoping to reunite with two actresses whom he has worked with before for his upcoming big screen Dark Shadows adaptation – Michelle Pfeiffer and Helena Bonham Carter.

Pfeiffer, who previously appeared in Burton’s Batman Returns, is up for the role of Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, matriarch of the Collins family.

Of course, Bonham Carter’s participation in Dark Shadows was almost a given anyway, as she and Burton have been a couple for quite some time now, with Bonham Carter having appeared in Burton’s remakes of Planet Of The Apes and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory as well as Big Fish, Sweeney Todd and Alice in Wonderland.

Headlining the cast is Johnny Depp as the vampire Barnabas Collins, the actor’s seventh collaboration with Burton. Also in the cast are Burton film freshmen Jackie Earl Haley, Bella Heathcoate and Eva Green.

Via Deadline.