Johnny Depp has told Collider.com that work on Tim Burton's big screen remake of legendary US supernatural soap will commence nect year, and that he'll be fitted for the fangs for the role of vampire Barnabas Collin.

“Dark Shadows is happening,” says Depp. "Tim is working on Alice in Wonderland which is obviously quite a large piece of work there. So when Tim is done with Alice and we get the script, which is very, very close, in order we’ll probably attack it next year. It’s exciting, very exciting. It’s like a lifelong dream for me. I loved the show when I was a kid. I was obsessed with Barnabas Collins. I have photographs of me holding Barnabas Collins posters when I was five or six. I’m very excited to do it.”

Dark Shadows is nigh on unknown outside of the US, but is a massive cult fave across the pond. In the US, the show began as a gothic soap opera based around a large mansion that didn't have any supernatural elements. Then the writers began to introduce ghosts, but the show really began to get noticed when vampire Barnabas Collins (played by Jonathan Frid) was introduced, initially as a 13-week gimmick. He proved so popular, he’s now pretty much an American icon, and the show just became more and more weird from there on in – it even had time travel plots.