'Dark Shadows' Trailer: Has Tim Burton Made The Biggest-Ever Fan Film?

Here at last is the trailer for Dark Shadows, the most recent of many pairings between director Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. The actor has wanted to revive the '60s supernatural soap opera Dark Shadows for years, and he and Burton, after much planning, finally shot the movie last year. One of many questions about the project has been concerned with whether something that has come across like a bit of an obsession for Depp can translate into a movie that people want to see now.

The trailer premiered on Warner Bros.-owned The Ellen Degeneres Show today — appropriate, I suppose, for a film that adapts a soap opera — and we've got it below.

The trailer from Apple.com:

So. There are quite a few good moments in there, with Chloe Moretz having bits that, I suspect, will best reflect audience reactions. The tone looks odd and goofy, and I don't know if that will be a good thing. This is Tim Burton, after all, and odd and goofy is part of his primary stock in trade. But is this "early Burton" odd, or the more self-conscious version of later years? Based on this I don't know what this movie is trying to do beyond playing around in the Dark Shadows sandbox.

Depp stars alongside Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green, Jackie Earle Haley, Jonny Lee Miller, Bella Heathcote, and Gulliver McGrath. Dark Shadows hits on May 11.

In the year 1752, Joshua and Naomi Collins, with young son Barnabas, set sail from Liverpool, England to start a new life in America. But even an ocean was not enough to escape the mysterious curse that has plagued their family. Two decades pass and Barnabas (Depp) has the world at his feet–or at least the town of Collinsport, Maine. The master of Collinwood Manor, Barnabas is rich, powerful and an inveterate playboy...until he makes the grave mistake of breaking the heart of Angelique Bouchard (Green). A witch, in every sense of the word, Angelique dooms him to a fate worse than death: turning him into a vampire, and then burying him alive. Two centuries later, Barnabas is inadvertently freed from his tomb and emerges into the very changed world of 1972. He returns to Collinwood Manor to find that his once-grand estate has fallen into ruin. The dysfunctional remnants of the Collins family have fared little better, each harboring their own dark secrets. Matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Pfeiffer) has called upon live-in psychiatrist, Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), to help with her family troubles. Also residing in the manor is Elizabeth's ne'er-do-well brother, Roger Collins, (Jonny Lee Miller); her rebellious teenage daughter Carolyn Stoddard (Moretz); and Roger's precocious 10-year-old son, David Collins (Gulliver McGrath). The mystery extends beyond the family, to caretaker Willie Loomis (Jackie Earle Haley) and David's new nanny, Victoria Winters, played by Bella Heathcote.