Tag: Tim Burton (11-20 of 24)

May 12 2012 08:30 AM ET

'Frankenweenie': Tim Burton talks about his upcoming pet project

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Frankenweenie

Image Credit: Disney

For Tim Burton, this year is 2005 all over again. In 2005, the director first released the big-budget, live-action Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the summer, followed by the stop-motion animated Corpse Bride in the fall. The latter earned Burton his first and only Oscar nomination (for animated feature film). Cut to 2012. Burton’s big-budget, live-action horror comedy Dark Shadows, his eighth collaboration with star Johnny Depp, hits theaters this weekend. But waiting in the wings is Frankenweenie, a 3-D stop-motion animated monster movie that’s very dear to Burton’s heart.

Frankenweenie is a remake of the 1984 black-and-white, live-action short of the same name, which Burton directed for Disney at the tender age of 25. At the time, Disney shelved the PG-rated short, about a suburban boy who brings his dead pooch back to life, deeming it too scary. But when Burton became a big-name director, the studio gave the short a home-video release in 1992, and it can now be found on the DVD and Blu-ray editions of The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Burton originally envisioned Frankenweenie as a stop-motion animated movie, but opted for live-action due to budgetary concerns. “I’m kind of grateful that it was live-action, because if it had been animation, I probably wouldn’t have gotten into live-action,” said Burton. “It was a very lucky break in a way.” That’s because after actor Paul Reubens saw Frankenweenie, he hired Burton to direct his 1985 film Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, which led to Beetlejuice, which led to Batman, and so on.

Burton’s feature-length version of Frankenweenie isn’t due for another five months (Disney will release it on Oct. 5), but EW recently sat down with the filmmaker and picked his brain — hiding beneath all those famously unruly curls of hair — about the project. READ FULL STORY »

Apr 19 2012 02:28 PM ET

Jonathan Frid, original 'Dark Shadows' star, dies at 87

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jonathan-frid

Image Credit: Getty Images

UPDATED: Johnny Depp comments below …

Just a few weeks before his most famous character was to be reborn, the original Barnabas Collins from Dark Shadows has died.

Jonathan Frid, the Canadian actor who brought the suave bloodsucker to life on the 1966-71 gothic soap opera, passed away from natural causes on April 13 in his hometown of Hamilton, Ontario, according to MPI Home Video, which releases the Dark Shadows DVDs.

Dark Shadows inspired a generation of boys — Tim Burton and Johnny Depp among them — to become obsessed with a show originally aimed at their mothers. On May 11, Burton and Depp will debut their passion project: a big-screen version of the tale, with Depp taking on the role Frid originated. READ FULL STORY »

Mar 18 2012 05:00 PM ET

'Dark Shadows' screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith on trailer reaction: 'We wanted to have fun with it'

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Johnny-Depp-Shadows

Image Credit: Peter Mountain

The next three months are going to be a whirlwind for writer Seth Grahame-Smith. On April 10, the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies author’s next foray into genre-tweaked revisionist fiction, Unholy Night — about the Three Kings of the Nativity — arrives in bookstores. On May 11, his big screen version of the beloved horror soap opera Dark Shadows, directed by Tim Burton, hits theaters. And on June 22, Grahame-Smith’s adaptation of his hit novel Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, with Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov, will open.

“It’s going to be a very interesting, crazy spring and summer,” he tells EW with a laugh, minutes before stepping onto the stage at WonderCon in Anaheim, Calif. for the big panel on Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Grahame-Smith is especially aware of what’s in store for him at the multiplex, with two dark, gothic debuting within six weeks of each other. “The good news is that they’re extremely different,” he says. “One is much more of an entertainment, much more overtly funny. And one is a kick-ass period action movie.”

The bad news? Reaction to the Dark Shadows trailer has been, in Grahame-Smith’s words, “mixed,” with many fans of the TV show crying foul over the trailer’s jokey, winky tone. It’s a reaction that Grahame-Smith says he understands, although it took him a bit by surprise. Check out our interview about it below: READ FULL STORY »

Mar 15 2012 08:31 PM ET

'Dark Shadows' trailer: Johnny Depp/Tim Burton vampire soap opera plays for laughs

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The beginning of the trailer is straight-up gothic horror: an 18th-century romance, a jealous witch, a freshly born vampire crying blood, a hushed ghost whispering “He’s coming …”

Then Johnny Depp and Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows turns on the laugh track.

This movie, based on the 1966-1971 supernatural soap opera, turns out to take its source material not so seriously. When the buried undead bloodsucker Barnabas Collins is freed from his tomb in the year 1972, he finds the time period … a little funky.

READ FULL STORY »

Feb 13 2012 01:59 PM ET

'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' debuts axe-swinging teaser trailer

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Seems the old rail-splitter has become the head-slicer.

After new photos from the history/horror mash-up Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter debuted last week, EW’s brothers and sisters over at Time.com have revealed the exclusive new trailer for the Tim Burton-produced thriller, due in theaters June 22.

Click through to see …

READ FULL STORY »

Feb 7 2012 09:00 AM ET

'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' frees bloodsuckers to be evil again -- NEW PHOTOS

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It’s bizarre enough to imagine a world where our nation’s 16th president walks among vampires; thankfully, we don’t have to see him harboring a secret crush on one of them, too.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (out June 22) arrives at time when the scariest thing about bloodsuckers is how tame they’ve become. For decades they were merciless, seductive, and bloodthirsty villains, but now they’re more commonly seen as the sparkling, waifish, and weepy heroes of YA romantic chick-lit.

Look at this picture of ol’ Honest Abe: He’s mad as hell! And he’s not going to take it anymore, Stephenie Meyer! YAAARRGHH!

In this historical fantasy, produced by Tim Burton, vampires strike the same twitchy nerve among the citizenry that terrorists do in our real world.

“It’s not a sermon in any way, but it is interesting to look at vampires as the all-encompassing, unspeakable, unknowable evil,” says Benjamin Walker, who stars as the bearded slayer-in-chief. “This evil moves among us, and maybe lives next door. It’s an ideology that we don’t fully understand, but they live by it.” READ FULL STORY »

Jan 20 2012 04:00 PM ET

'Dark Shadows': New shot of Johnny Depp

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Johnny-Depp-Shadows

Image Credit: Peter Mountain

If you wanted to get closer to Johnny Depp’s Barnabas Collins in our official first look at the cast of Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows last fall, here’s your chance. Warner Bros. has released this closeup of Depp (and his vampire nails). Is it just me, or does he look younger than he did in The Tourist?

Barnabas Collins is an 18th century gentleman who was transformed against his will into a vampire and buried in a tomb — until he’s uncovered by construction workers in the year 1972. As screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith told EW last year, he’s still a ladies man. “In some sense he can be a terrifying killer; on the other hand, women have a weakness for him and he has a weakness for women … He can be a very well-mannered, well-meaning vampire most of the time, until his stomach is empty or someone challenges his beloved Collins family.”

What do you think? Success?

Read more:
Johnny Depp’s true ‘Dark Shadows’ vampire revealed! — EXCLUSIVE FIRST LOOK
Johnny Depp on ‘Dark Shadows’: Can a vampire get corn stuck in his fangs?

Oct 27 2011 03:06 AM ET

Tim Burton re-animates boy-and-dog story 'Frankenweenie' -- FIRST LOOK!

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Photo by Leah Gallo

Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie is shaping up to be an interesting mix of “Ewwwww!’s” as well as “Awwwww’s.”

His latest stop-motion gothic-fest (rendered in 1950s-style black-and-white as well as 3-D) tells the story of a little boy named Victor, who loves his pet dog Sparky more than anything in the world. Naturally — or rather, unnaturally — Victor decides to use his science kit to bring the pup back from the grave after an accident claims the pooch’s life.

As with Mary Shelley’s original 1818 tale of men playing god and science run amok, pandemonium follows the creation of the “monster,” who in this case is just a stitched-up, resurrected undead buddy.

Many know that Burton lost his job as an artist at The Walt Disney Co. for making this dark comedy as a live-action short in 1984, but few know the true story from Burton’s past that inspired it. As Halloween approaches, EW reveals that long-ago tale, along with first-look stills from the movie. READ FULL STORY »

Sep 22 2011 11:16 AM ET

Johnny Depp's true 'Dark Shadows' vampire revealed! -- EXCLUSIVE FIRST LOOK

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Photo by Leah Gallo

Behold the real visage of Johnny Depp’s vampire from Dark Shadows!

Last week, long-range paparazzi shots of the actor wearing ghostly white makeup, large sunglasses and a pulled down fedora made fans of the original 1966-71 supernatural soap opera bristle nervously, with complaints he looked simply too strange.

Nevermind that he’s playing a 200-year-old vampire, which is strange enough.

As you can see from this cast shot, Depp’s bloodsucking pater familias Barnabas Collins actually borrows heavily from the aged-little boy look of original Dark Shadows star Jonathan Frid — not that anyone would be happy to see this guy show up as your prom date either.

Still, this official First Look may reassure those die-hard fans of the original series, memorably offbeat ABC daytime drama about a vampire whose extended family are bedeviled by ghosts, witches, and other gothic woes.

Depp, who fought for years to make this movie, is one of those fans. “I do remember, very vividly, practically sprinting home from school in the afternoon to see Jonathan Frid play Barnabas Collins,” the actor says. “Even then, at that age, I knew — this has got to be weird.”

Weird certainly sums up this particular family portrait — a shot director Tim Burton, who also obsessed over Dark Shadows as a boy, staged in the early days of production.

“I remember seeing a group photograph of the cast of the original series,” he tells EW. “For me it captured the weird Dark Shadows vibe in a single image. I had a brief window of opportunity to have our cast present at the same time, the day before principle photography began. We decided to stage a similar picture instead of rehearsing, to see if we captured the Dark Shadows feeling.”

Here’s who those family members are, one by one. READ FULL STORY »

Sep 6 2011 02:39 PM ET

New 'Beetlejuice' movie in the works at Warner Bros.

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Beetlejuice-poster

Beetlejuice! Beetlejuice! Beetleju–!

Not so fast. Everyone’s favorite “Ghost with the Most” isn’t going to appear again that easily, but fans of Tim Burton’s 1988 weird-fest will be curious to learn that a new movie is being hatched, though the details are sketchy at this point. Warner Bros. announced to Deadline a production deal with KatzSmith — the company made up of producer/writers David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith — to make Beetlejuice 2, or Beetlejuice Begins, or whatever form the new movie takes will be crafted by them.

Reps for the pair say it’s too early to characterize the form the movie might take, or whether the original cast Michael Keaton, Geena Davis, and Alec Baldwin will be involved, but it will not be a remake.

Given Grahame-Smith’s strong relationship with Burton, it’s likely the filmmaker will be involved in Beetlejuice‘s resurrection.

READ FULL STORY »

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