By MIKE FLEMING
Deadline.com
Thursday July 15, 2010 @ 11:53am EDT
EXCLUSIVE: Seth Grahame-Smith, who made his Hollywood entry writing novels that put a macabre twist to literary classics and historical figures, has just gotten the high profile job of writing the new draft of Dark Shadows, the Tim Burton-directed adaptation of the 60s daytime serial that will star Johnny Depp as the vampire Barnabas Collins. The film is slated to begin production in January at Warner Bros. Depp’92s Infinitum Nihil and Graham King’92s GK Films producing.
Warner Bros has been trying for several years to get to the start line on the movie adaptation of the TV series that ran on ABC from 1966-71 and had legions of schoolkids (now adults) racing home from school to be frightened by the moody and atmospheric storyline. Barnabas Collins (played by Jonathan Frid) was the central spooky figure in the groundbreaking supernatural soap. John August was the first writer hired to script the project, based on the Dan Curtis-created characters. Grahame-Smith will be scripting a new take under Burton, and got the job after scripting his own bestselling novel, Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Burton and Timur Bekmambetov bought that project out of their own money as producers, and I hear that Bekmambetov is likely to make the film his next directing effort. The book chronicles Lincoln as he navigates the North through the Civil War, with the added twist that his mother was killed by a supernatural creature. That traumatic experience forged his will to destroy vampires and their slave-owning helpers.
Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter is Grahame-Smith’92s second genre-bending novel to go the feature route. Lionsgate optioned his book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, with David O. Russell circling as director, and Natalie Portman starring as Elizabeth Bennett and producing a film that injects bloodthirsty zombies into Jane Austen’92s mannered literature.
Grahame-Smith also co-created with pal David Katzenberg the MTV series The Hard Times of RJ Berger. Grahame-Smith’s repped by WME.
