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Mark
Verheiden Talks About New Shadows
Special
thanks to: Wendi
Mark
Verheiden appeared at Creation's Grand Slam Convention
this previous weekend, and the topic of the new Dark Shadows
came up at his question and answer panel.
Here
are some notes, as taken by the fantastic Wendi...
There
had been interest in bringing Dark Shadows back for
a while now, but the "stars just seemed to align",
finally.
He
was asked to take over the project and worked with Dan Curtis
to make sure that he mixed that gothic feel into a show that's
definitely set in 2004. The pilot starts shooting THIS week.
At
the heart of Dark Shadows is a romance. It's the desperate
longing of the character of Barnabas for this girl who looks
like his long lost fiancee. It's a doomed, tragic romance
at heart.
The
other issue that provides conflict is remembering that this
is a vampire from 1790 brought back in 2004. Everything and
everyone he knew is gone.
When
asked if he felt DS contributed to the demise of Angel,
he said that he'd rather Angel and Dark Shadows
were on the same network. He thought they'd compliment each
other nicely, and the decision wasn't his to cancel Angel.
He knew nothing about even the possibility of it happening,
when he went in to work on DS and he hopes the fans
won't hold it against them.
He
says that one of the cool things about Dark Shadows
is that you can do darker, scarier things than you can do
on Smallville. For instance, Angelique, the witch,
does terrible things. She's the one who originally cursed
Barnabas into being a vampire and she's a *really* bad woman.
(btw, Mark was funny as hell talking about Angelique...I think
he's scared of her but thinks she's hot)
Dark
Shadows is much more intense than Smallville. Smallville
is rural middle America, and DS is rural Maine, but
it's very much so rural Maine *horror*.
When
he was asked about what fans can do to help keep genre television
alive in the wake of reality TV, he said you basically have
to send a message to the networks that you *want* genre TV
by giving it ratings. You can write letters and show your
enthusiasm in campaigns and such, but the most effective way
is to watch the shows and give the network the numbers that
show the interest is there.
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