Michelle Pfeiffer & Helena Bonham Carter in Tim Burton's DARK SHADOWS

By Matt Holmes /

Michelle Pfeiffer has just landed a role in Dark Shadows, her first movie with director Tim Burton since she rocked many a geeks world as Catwoman in Batman Returns, almost twenty years ago. The actress is in talks to portray Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, the "reclusive matriarch of the Collins family which runs the Maine town. The character has not left the mansion since the disappearance of her husband a decade earlier." Deadline, incidentally, also say Helena Bonham Carter looks likely to portray €œHoffman, a specialist in psychology and rare blood disorders who moves into Collinwood.€- so our initial enthusiasm that Burton wouldn't once again cast his partner for a movie was a bit premature. The Warner Bros adaptation of the 60€s supernatural ABC daily serial that centers on Johnny Depp as a tortured vampire, with feelings and has a cool cast - Jackie Earle Haley, Eva Green and Bella Heathcote - and will begin filming in April. Hated Alice in Wonderland and the majority of Burton's films this century but, probably foolishly, we like how this film is shaping up so far.