When it was first reported that David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith were going to begin their producing partnership by working on a sequel to the Tim Burton film Beetlejuice, it didn’t really sound like a good idea to me. At first glance it seems like Beetlejuice is a very specifically Tim Burton movie, and the idea of somebody else working in that universe feels strange and off-putting. Why would you even want to make another Beetlejuice unless you were Tim Burton?  That would be like somebody who wasn’t Quentin Tarantino saying they were going to make a sequel to Pulp Fiction. But when Grahame-Smith said that he would only do the movie if he got Burton’s blessing and if Michael Keaton came back to star as the titular ghost with the most, the idea started to sound less crazy. I mean, seeing somebody else working in this world that is so visually Burton’s vision would still be a little weird, but who wouldn’t be interested at the possibility of Keaton slipping back into one of his most outlandish and iconic roles? I’ve found my skepticism about a Beetlejuice sequel waning over time. And that continues now that there’s some confirmation that Burton is, in fact, going to be involved with this movie in some way. While talking to the people at MTV about his current projects Dark Shadows and Frankenweenie, Burton took a minute to address his own feelings about the developing sequel. On doing another Beetlejuice he said, “I [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

It’s been a long time since we’ve talked about producer Dan Jinks trying to get a live action version of Pinocchio together over at Warner Bros. So long that many people probably assumed that the project was dead. That’s not the case though. As a matter of fact, it’s probably about to get quite a bit of attention. THR is reporting that none other than Tim F’n Burton has taken an interest in the Pinocchio script, which was written by Pushing Daisies creator Bryan Fuller. And I know what you’re thinking already…who wants to see a version of Pinocchio starring Johnny Depp as the puppet and Helena Bonham Carter as Geppetto in drag? Don’t be so quick to judge. Early reports don’t say anything about Depp or Carter at all. As a matter of fact, apparently Burton wants Robert Downey Jr. to come on board to be his Italian puppeteer. How’s that for a switch?

Why Watch? Early Tim Burton, late Vincent Price, and a stop-motion nursery rhyme for the gruesome ones. This 1982 team-up between Burton and Price was one of the director’s last short films before landing the directing gig for Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and going down the path we all know he followed. It came 11 years before The Nightmare Before Christmas, but the tones and design concepts are all there (just no Henry Selick). Instead of a skeletal hero, it’s a little boy who wants to turn his dog into a zombie. What does it cost? Just 6 minutes of your time.

In schoolyards around the world, the debate continues to rage: Is Santa Claus real? Or is he just some concept concocted by parents to keep kids in line year-round? Even us adults can remember having knock-down, drag-out arguments over this. Our parents told us that if we waited up for Santa on Christmas Eve, we’d be quickly relegated to the dreaded “Naughty List,” and we’d get nothing but coal in our stockings. As a public service, this installment of the Holiday Survival Guide will help you win those arguments. Keeping up with the tradition of every child’s desire to capture jolly old St. Nicholas, here are some tricks we can dish out, courtesy of the big entertainment machine called Hollywood. Use them wisely, and be sure to only target the real Santa Claus. Failure to do so may result in injury or even death.

It’s one thing when we’re talking about Alfred Hitchcock having a walk-through in every single one of his films, including one that exclusively takes place on a lifeboat (he appears in a newspaper ad for that one). Sure it’s eccentric but it’s not surprising because, well, they’re his films and he can appear in them as he pleases. What does strike me as weird is when a director shows up totally unexpected in someone else’s film. Usually there is a good reason – either they are producing the film or friends with the cast. However despite the later explanation, it’s still a bit jarring to see, say… the director of Kill Bill in an Adam Sandler comedy…

Throughout his now lengthy career director Tim Burton has always had an attraction to darkness, to the macabre, to using his unique visual style to bring to life the peculiar. So it doesn’t come as much surprise to hear Deadline Burbank reporting that he’s negotiating to direct a movie about a dilapidated orphanage that once housed strange children with mystical powers. The project is an adaptation of a novel by Ransom Riggs called Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children. The book is a mixture of both prose and vintage photography that it uses as illustration, so a peek inside its covers should give a good clue as to how Burton would be approaching this material visually should he end up taking on the project. Well, and a peek at Burton’s past films should be a good indication of how he would approach it visually as well; this guy kind of has a wheelhouse that he stays in. As far as the story goes, the book’s Amazon description says, “ … As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow—impossible though it seems—they may still be alive.” So [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Alice Cooper has long been considered one of the preeminent denizens of the dark. With his lifelong commitment to horror makeup, heavy metal music, and golf, it couldn’t have happened any other way. So when director Tim Burton needed a music act to appear in his upcoming adaptation of the old, spooky soap Dark Shadows, Cooper seemed like an easy fit. Hero Complex reports that the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer is set for a cameo in the film where he will be performing his hit song ‘No More Mr. Nice Guy.’ The setup for the scene is that Johnny Depp’s character, wealthy vampire Barnabas Collins, is throwing an elaborate ball at his palatial estate, and he hires Cooper to be the musical entertainment. To bring Collins’s home to life, Burton and his crew have constructed an elaborate series of sets that includes a gothic mansion and a harbor city complete with piers and boats floating in an artificial ocean. Cooper was so impressed with what he saw that, while at a Universal Studios Halloween event, he opined, “They should take that set and make it a haunted house next year.” He also had some kind words to say about Burton, and how he and the director relate to and understand one another very well, “Rock and horror and comedy work together, that’s something I’ve known a long time and people like Rob Zombie know, and Burton knows that too …  I just saw Final Destination 5 and I was [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

After it was announced that David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith were forming a production company whose first order of business was to develop a sequel to the Tim Burton comedy Beetlejuice, the biggest question on everybody’s mind was whether they would be casting a newer, younger actor in the title role and treating this film as something of a reboot, or if they would be getting Michael Keaton to once again don the zombie makeup and green hair of the iconic ghost with the most. As it turns out, Katzenberg and Grahame-Smith are very wise men who understand that Michael Keaton, quite frankly, is Beetlejuice. It didn’t even feel right when somebody else voiced him for the animated series and I was 8 when I watched that.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s all about movies, and television, and comics, and literature, and photos of hot women. Such as Miss Piggy, yo. We begin tonight with perhaps the most interesting twist of the fall movie season. In recent interviews, the likes of Frank Oz and other original puppeteers and writers from the Jim Henson school are speaking out about how The Muppets might not respect the characters they helped create. “I wasn’t happy with the script,” Oz told Metro. “I don’t think they respected the characters. But I don’t want to go on about it like a sourpuss and hurt the movie.”

I try not to report on set photos very often, and that’s for a of couple reasons. First off, it’s one thing to look at official images that are released by the studio and are ideally meant to create hype for a project without giving much of it away, and it’s another to look at spy photos that, quite frankly, give away a lot more about a movie than I want to know before I’m sitting in the theater to watch the finished product. And also, seeing things out of context, not through the lens of the cinematographer, and without any of that special “movie magic” attached to it, can give you the wrong impression of how a film is going to look and make you go into your actual viewing of the finished film battling unfair prejudices. Case in point are some recent spy pics from the set of Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows, which made the rounds and gave Internet fans a glimpse at what Johnny Depp would look like as the vampire Barnabas Collins. His face was covered in a thick layer of grease paint, it looked like he had plastic hair, and generally the picture made Dark Shadows look like it was going to be one of the over-the-top cartoon movies that have become a hallmark of Burton’s recent career. That aesthetic doesn’t jibe much with what the original Dark Shadows was, and would have probably been a pretty stupid way to approach the material. Probably if [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

And The Joker is his stylist. CelebBuzz (via Cinema Blend) has a handful of shots that prove that Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have begun shooting Dark Shadows, but the design work going on here is absolutely atrocious. Fortunately, there are more where the one above came from. Of course, we don’t know if this is the costume and make-up work for Barnabas Collins or just Depp arriving to work, but if it’s the former, applause is in order. It’s nice to see that they’re keeping this thing as cartoonish as possible. Dark Shadows was never meant to be taken seriously.

David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith, now together known as Katzsmith Productions, have signed a new feature producing deal with Warner Bros. Who are these guys? Katzenberg wrote and directed a short film about a teenage nerd with a big unit that he later developed into the MTV series The Hard Times of R.J. Berger, and Garahame-Smith is the guy who wrote Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. The two have been working together for a while, and Warners likes what they see; so much so that they’re expected to be handed the reigns of a sequel to the 1988 horror-comedy Beetlejuice as their first project. Warner Bros. production president Greg Silverman explains the new deal, “We first got to know Seth through his fantastic work on Dark Shadows, and it immediately became a priority to expand our relationship with him. Seth introduced us to David, who greatly impressed us with the vision for KatzSmith from the very first meeting. We firmly believe in their talents and are extremely excited to welcome them to the Warners family.”

Having just watched The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, I’m in the mood for something slightly more uplifting than watching small children being murdered at the hands of their own fathers in an ironic twist of fate that I may have just spoiled for anyone who hasn’t yet seen it. Ah well, it’s not exactly the most cheery of films anyway, so maybe choose something else from the Pyjama canon of works – perhaps Bananas in Pyjamas or something like that. Anyway, rambling isn’t getting me anywhere, so I’m channeling the spirit of movie merch nostalgia once again to try and cheer the whole ruddy miserable world up. And with that in mind, this week’s cornucopia of merchandising magic comes courtesy of a phenomenal Joker action figure from Sideshow, a set of incredible Art Nouveau posters from a bona fide legend-in-the-making artist and a winning blast from the past from Tiger Electronics…

Two-weeks or so after the release of the near-terrible Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, there’s already a list of directors that Disney is keen on to helm the fifth entry in the quality diving franchise. The list of filmmakers Disney is favoring is a bit surprising. There’s their top pick of Tim Burton, the always busy Sam Raimi, critical darling Alfonso Cuarón, Twilight 2 guy Chris Weitz, and the online venom drawer, Shawn Levy. Apparently an offer went out to Rob Marshall to return months ago, although he may be too busy with his Thin Man remake (*eye roll*)… Burton was rumored for the fourth film as well, but after Alice in Wonderland and Planet of the Apes, I don’t think I’ll ever be interested in seeing a big Burton action sequence ever again. And considering he’s currently working on Dark Shadows then Frankenweenie, he may be not have the time. Side note, when will see an original Burton film again?

Coming off the heels of box office news that Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides made more money in its standard showings than in its 3D showings, and a weekend in which the big 3D family release Kung-Fu Panda 2 opened softer than analysts were predicting, comes comments from Tim Burton regarding his upcoming films, and whether they will use 3D. As you might remember, Burton’s last film, Alice in Wonderland, used the oft derided 3D post conversion method and became one of the poster children for film’s that didn’t present well crafted 3D effects at all, but still charged the extra money for the ticket. When asked about 3D plans for his upcoming big screen adaptation of the vampire soap opera Dark Shadows, Burton said, “I have no plans for that.”

Dark Shadows is the next chance for Tim Burton to succeed, and he’s playing in a very familiar sandbox. A too-familiar sandbox for some, but there’s still hope that in retuning to Gothic roots in a passion project for Johnny Depp, the director can recapture some magic. The one mystery about the movie is what kind of tone it will take. The television show is well known enough, but the movie could take it seriously, keep the camp, or shoot for something entirely different. Fortunately, there’s a plot synopsis  lurking about (thanks to a Warner Bros. press release announcing the start of filming). Unfortunately, it won’t tell us anything about the tone. Read the synopsis for yourself and try to figure out if Burton and company are going more Scissorhands or more Ed Wood here:

The possibility of a return to Ed Wood sensibilities has been a major reason to keep an eye on Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows adaptation that sees Johnny Depp fulfilling his childhood dream of becoming the second best actor to portray Barnabas Collins. The cast is the other major reason. Amidst the usual gang of idiots that hover around Burton and Depp are Eva Green, Michael Sheen, and Jackie Earle Haley. According to JoBlo, we can add Chloe Moretz‘s name to that list. She’ll play the daughter of Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (who’s being played by Michelle Pfiefer) – a spoiled, bratty rich princess named Carolyn. Sort of a Veruca Salt for the vampire crowd. Sounds like Moretz can thank that blonde girl from Addams Family Values for blazing the path.

You already knew that Helena Bonham Carter would be joining her life partner Tim Burton’s film version of Dark Shadows because you haven’t been in a come for the past decade. It was only a question of who she’ll play. According to Deadline Sunnydale, Carter is in talks to play Dr. Julia Hoffman – a regular character on the creaky television show who was originally played by Academy Award nominee (for Night of the Iguana) Grayson Hall. No word yet on whether her character will have two different-colored shoes. It would be a role that sees a lot of screen time with (a wigless) Barnabas Collins (as played by Johnny Depp). According to the same report, Michelle Pfeiffer might re-team with Tim Burton for the first time since Batman Returns. She would play Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, the mater familias of the clan who was played by noir legend Joan Bennett on the original show. It’s also important to note that while the television show has a moderately large cult following, and is truly beloved by the filmmakers here, it was a trainwreck of a program that typically had flies buzzing in and out of shots, a door that refused to work, and boom mics sneaking into frame. It was hectic, daily episode madness that made it so lovable, so it’ll be interesting to see if Burton can capture that same spirit.

Depp has had a lot of criticism hailed at him in recent years, some even from yours truly, saying that he is getting too comfortable relying on props and gimmicks to float through his performances in Tim Burton movies. Basically get the man a silly wig, have him imitate some sort of funny voice, animate a bunch of trippy stuff to happen around him, and you have a movie. No real acting necessary. That may be harsh, and it’s not entirely true, but there is a smidge of truth to it. There’s no denying the things he and Burton have been doing together in recent years have looked quite similar. Well Depp tells MTV that with Dark Shadows he won’t be straying too far from the performance the original actor who portrayed Barnabas Collins gave in the 60s TV show. He said, “For me, even the conversations I’ve had with Tim, what Jonathan Frid did with that character and that classic look he created, I find it very difficult to stray very far from that. I think it’s going to be somewhere in that arena, with maybe just a couple of different touches here and there.”

Hot on the heels of the news that Jackie Earle Haley and Bella Heathcoate would be joining Tim Burton’s new mystical romp as a manservant and a mistress of an estate comes word that former Bond girl with a sexy French accent Eva Green will also be joining the cast. She will be playing Angelique, a witch who has a complicated but heated relationship with Johnny Depp’s vampire protagonist Barnabas Collins.