Look out, Netflix, Warner Bros is coming for your Wednesday audience. It’s fair to say that Hollywood and the major TV networks have a thing for nostalgia. While original releases like Obsession draw significant attention for their surprising box office performance, executives will always be on the lookout for established IP that can be revitalized to take advantage of existing brand power and crucial established audiences. That’s why we’re getting a ThunderCats animated movie, and why Amazon MGM bet so big on Masters of the Universe (it doesn’t always work out as it should). And now Warner Bros has announced another reboot of a hugely popular TV show from the 1960s that is the very definition of cult classic.
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14 years after Tim Burton remade it for the first time, Warner Bros has just announced that a new reboot of cult classic 1960s Gothic fantasy series Dark Shadows is on the way. The original show ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971, and came to life after creator Dan Curtis had a dream. Widely considered one of the network’s first daytime successes, it spawned a committed fanbase – including Burton – despite starting out as a far straighter soap opera than what it ended up as. Warner Bros is now retooling the show as an adult animation, aimed squarely, no doubt, at the demographic who took so strongly to Netflix’s Wednesday and the Addams Family animated movies.
Dark Shadows Has a Huge Fanbase
Warner Bros Animation’s official synopsis for the show reads, “Adult animated series continuing the saga of the Collins family. Blending gothic, horror, and supernatural genres, this coming adaptation promises all the dark twists and romantic intrigue that defined the transformational series across its 1200-plus episode run.” The announcement is also timed to coincide with the original show’s 60th anniversary, and includes confirmation that Lisa Holdsworth will serves as showrunner. This is the fourth reincarnation of Dark Shadows: the first came in 1991, and despite initial popularity, it was canceled after declining ratings, leaving a disappointingly unresolved cliffhanger. In 2004, Warner Bros then made an unsuccessful pilot, which you can watch below, before Tim Burton remade it as a movie with Johnny Depp starring. The CW also unveiled plans for a reboot – titled Dark Shadows: Reincarnation – which was last said to be being retooled and reshopped in 2021.
When it first arrived in the 1960s, Dark Shadows developed a major teenage audience, which quickly developed into a cult fandom that propelled it to more than 1200 episodes – unthinkable by today’s standards. But the daytime television format worked perfectly, and as ABC shifted into more purely supernatural territory during the first season, the cult around it hardened. Much like the appeal of The Addams Family and The Munsters, the fandom was driven by the depiction of supernatural creatures in more conventional, domestic settings. You can basically trace most storytelling conventions in modern shows directly back to what Dark Shadows was doing 6 decades ago.
Given the success of Wednesday, and the often transformative impact of adult animation shows – a medium that has just added Absolute Batman and Ricky Gervais’ Alley Cats to the slate – this looks like a smart play to test out the appeal to new audiences, as well as catering to the old ones. If it is, as Warner Bros says, a continuation of the family’s adventures, we can hopefully avoid the messy conversations around original fans feeling betrayed by the constant need to reboot and retool everything. And while Wednesday fans are likely to tune in, Netflix’s flagship supernatural show will now have direct competition, not only from this but also from Disney+’s YA oriented Casper reboot.
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