60-Year-Old Vampire Fantasy Franchise Officially Gets New Reboot Series

Warner Bros. is resurrecting the classic Dark Shadows Gothic horror series as an adult animated show in its 60th anniversary year, inviting audiences back to the town of Collinwood, Maine. The studio’s move comes perhaps after the record-breaking success Netflix saw with its Wednesday series, which stars Jenna Ortega in the titular role and remains the most-watched Netflix original of all time.

Tim Burton, who directed a 2012 theatrical feature adaptation starring Johnny Depp as the vampire Barnabas Collins, has a connection to the franchise; in that film Barnabas wakes up hundreds of years after "dying" to find his family name besmirched. The Dark Shadows movie was neither well-received nor commercially successful.

Several previous attempts to reboot Dark Shadows have faltered: a lavish NBC revival in the early 1990s was canceled after a single season, a 2004 reboot never moved beyond its pilot, and an adaptation for The CW was canceled due to unprecedented global events in the early 2020s.

United States, Collinwood, Maine

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