Johnny Depp Channels Michael Jackson in First Pics as ‘Dark Shadow’s’ Barnabas Collins

Sporting what looks like a complete cluster f*ck of every Burton costume he’s ever worn – and looking more like Michael Jackson or Batman’s The Joker than the tragic, conflicted, and stately protagonist Collins is known to be – Depp’s fedora, white pancake makeup, and cane seem strangely out of place, but frustratingly predictable for Burton. My only guess is that he’s going for some kind of uber German expressionist vibe with exaggerated … everything. It’s true that these are just a few early pictures and we can’t judge everything on them, but it already seems that Burton has zeroed in on Dark Shadow’s overwrought appeal due to the way he’s dressed the movie’s lead character. Dark Shadows’ drama and cheese factor was set to high, sure, but the show’s spooky supernatural universe had an old school scary feel that fans will be sure to miss if Burton goes heavy-handed with everything.

“Barnabas (Depp) 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 turns him into a vampire and then buries 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.”