Eva Green Set to Join Johnny Depp in Burton’s Dark Shadows

Eva Green who turned the Bond girl role upside down is now set to join Johnny Depp in the Tim Burton directed adaptation of Dark Shadows. Based on the 60s TV soap, Green is set to play the powerful witch Angelique who’ll have something of a love hate relationship with Depp’s vampire, Barnabas Collins. The original show blended conventional drama with a ghoulish atmosphere, and visually was a throwback of sorts to German Expressionism / horror films of the 1920s.

Burton and Depp have been developing the concept since 2008 and the film will blend the Victorian horror-inspired tone of the soap. Their previous efforts have brought some interesting and macabre imagery so this one could be a similarly dark and humorous story.The script is being penned by story whiz and pop-culture writer Seth Grahame-Smith who adapted his own novel, ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ for the screen.

Also in talks to join the cast are Jackie Earle Haley and Aussie starlet Bella Heathcote.  Haley is set to play Willie Loomis who in the original soap was a notorious con artist who goes to the Collinwood estate to swindle the reclusive matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, and ends up living in the mansion. He soon hatches a plan when he sees a portrait of Barnabas Collins that indicates there might be some valuable jewelery lying around and when he breaks into the mausoleum, the vampire Collins turns him into his helpless servant.

Bella Heathcote will likely play Victoria Winters, the young governess of the Collins estate. At one stage she was in the running to play the lead in ‘Snow White and the Huntsman’ which has Twilight Saga’s Kristen Stewart as the front runner.

French-born actress Eva Green recently starred in the Sundance festival flick, ‘Perfect Sense’ a romantic thriller opposite Ewan McGregor. She’s also in the upcoming Starz period drama Camelot which airs April 1, 2011.

Dark Shadows has a release date of late 2012.

via: Deadline