Michelle Pfeiffer Joins Tim Burton, Johnny Depp Film 'Dark Shadows'

Michelle Pfeifferis in talks to joinDark Shadows, Tim Burton’s feature film adaptation of the supernatural 1960s soap opera.  Producer and star Johnny Depp is playing Barnabas Collins, a 175-year-old vampire.

Pfeiffer, 52, will play Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, the reclusive matriarch of the film’s central family in the small Maine fishing town.  An agoraphobic, Elizabeth hasn’t left the family mansion since the disappearance of her husband a decade earlier, according toTHR.

Burton likes to“keep it in the family” and Pfeiffer is no exception.  The two worked together on 1992’sBatman Returnswhen the actress played the leather-clad temptress Catwoman.  Similarly, this is the eighth partnership of Burton and Depp, and Burton’s domestic partner,Helena Bonham Carter, will collaborate with the director for the sixth time.  Bonham Carter is reportedly preparing to play Dr. Julia Hoffman, a specialist in psychology and rare blood disorders who arrives in the town to investigate a kidnapping and stays to help Barnabas cure his thirst.

Eva Green,Jackie Earle Haley, andBella Heathcoate, who have not worked with Burton before, were announcedearlier this month.  Green will play Angelique, a powerful witch and the spurned lover of Barnabas Collins; Earle Haley is negotiating to play Willie Loomis, a conman who releases Barnabas from his sealed coffin only to be attacked and enslaved as the vampire’s manservant; and Heathcoate is playing Victoria Winters, the young governess of the Collins estate.

Burton is assembling the cast quickly to start shooting inApril 2011, which fits the considerably packed schedule of his lead, who has three movies out this year and another three or four lined up to shoot in 2011.  Burton will move from this toFrankenweenie, a stop motion animated feature expansion of his 1984 short film about a resurrected dog, then either Disney’sMaleficent, a Sleeping Beauty re-imagining, or, more likely,DreamWorks’Monsterpocalypse, a thriller about monsters and robots battling each other in a cityscape.

Pfeiffer is part of the crowded ensemble for New Line’sNew Year’s Eveand a part of theWelcome to the Peoplecast.

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