Despite hiring a few fresh faces in recent weeks for Dark Shadows, it now looks like Tim Burton has been thumbing through his phone contacts to gather up some familiar names to join the cast. Well, he probably had to call Michelle Pfeiffer – chances are he just wandered next-door to ask Helena Bonham Carter if she wanted to sign on.
Yes, according to the Heat Vision Blog, Pfeiffer – who seared herself into the collective geek consciousness as Catwoman in Burton’s Batman Returns – is now negotiating to play Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, the family matriarch who has become a recluse in the Collins mansion since her husband vanished 10 years earlier.
Deadline, meanwhile, brings word that recent BAFTA-winner Bonham Carter is seriously considering playing Dr Julia Hoffman, a specialist in both psychology and rare blood diseases (well, it was a soap opera) who moves into the family pile and starts out as a possible enemy for Depp’s vampiric Barnabas Collins, but ends up working with him to see if she can cure his blood lust. While Bonham-Carter hasn’t automatically agreed to work with the man she’s engaged to and has two children with, she’ll probably say yes just to stop him making sad faces at her.
As for the newcomers, Eva Green, Jackie Earle Haley and Bella Heathcote are already all aboard the film, which is set to finally start shooting in April.