The marketing campaign for Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows is now in full swing with a little less than two months to go before the film’s released. While I was pleasantly surprised by the goofy first trailer, I found the random Alice Cooper cameo to be a little irksome and cheesy. That said, it’s good to see Burton doing comedy again and I’m hoping for the best from this adaptation of the cult soap series. Nine character posters have now been unveiled, giving us a colorful look at this strange, strange family. The plot involves a vampire (Johnny Depp) who awakens in 1972 after having been buried for 200 years and tries to reconnect with his descendants.Hit the jump to check out the posters. The film also stars Eva Green, Chloe Moretz, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jackie Earle Haley, and Bella Heathcote. Dark Shadows opens on May 11th.
Here’s the official 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.
Posters via Empire.