[Movies] John August Talks About His Original Dark Shadows Film Vision
Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 10.01.2012
Before it got rewritten...
John August recently spoke about his original draft for Dark Shadows before Seth Grahame-Smith rewrote it into the script used by Tim Burton. Check out the highlights:
On how much of his work made it into the film: "Not a lot. Dark Shadows, when it came to me, it was before Twilight had come out and before True Blood. They said, 'Let's make a big gothic, vampire drama.' I pitched that and I wrote a Godfather-like saga of the Collins family and Barnabas was at the center of it all."
On what happened to his version: "I was really happy with it and it looked like it was going to happen. Other movies came first, other things happened first. Twilight and True Blood came out and, suddenly, vampires were everywhere. I understood the instinct of, 'Let's not make it a drama, let's make it a comedy,' but that wasn't the movie I set out to write. It was frustrating, but that's the nature of screenwriting. You're building a movie that may not end up shooting."
On his script: "It took itself seriously. It was set in '71 too and leaned on that for a bit of the comedy, but it played itself straight and not a comedy. I was excited to make that movie and, honestly, I think it's one of the best scripts I've written. But I totally get why, at the time they went off to make it, they didn't make that version. It was frustrating to see other things coming out doing what was there, like True Blood, but that's going to happen."
