According to
Deadline,
Jackie Earle Haley's recent career resurgence will continue with a large role in the new Tim Burton/Johnny Depp movie
Dark Shadows, that shoots at Warner Bros. in April. The Shutter Island actor and current Freddy Krueger is in talks for the role of Willie Loomis - a notorious con artist who becomes man servant when his blood is sucked by the vampire Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp). Dark Shadows is based on the Gothic horror 60's soap opera serial that centered on the vampire Collins and his tortured search for his long lost love. No word on who is playing that part yet but Deadline also say
Bella Heathcote is in talks to appear as Victoria Winters, the young lady who becomes the Governess of the Collins estate because she resemblances the Vampire's long lost love. She will likely be the lead of the picture with Depp's role supporting as it was in Alice in Wonderland. Deadline explain the Loomis role more fully;
Loomis is a notorious con artist who comes to Collinwood bent on swindling the reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard. He winds up living in the mansion and hatches a plan when he observes a portrait of the late Barnabas Collins, who wore some serious bling. Loomis breaks into the mausoleum and pries open Barnabas' coffin expecting to steal jewelry, he's given the shock of his life when he's attacked by the vampire and rendered the servant and whipping boy of the bloodsucker.
Seth Grahame-Smith (who wrote the twisted
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and
Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter the latter which Burton is producing for
Timbur Bekmambetov to adapt as his next film) wrote the freshest draft of the supernatural screenplay. All the staples of the Tim Burton formula are here as the show regularly featured werewolves, ghosts, zombies, man-made monsters and witches, and its use of atmosphere and outlandish characters was its hallmark. Though with this kind of show, anything is fair game, such as time travel, zombies, anything. I'm not sure there are rules to it...
Dark Shadows will be released sometime next year.