With Tim Burton about to start cranking the cameras on Dark Shadows, he’s gathering the remaining cast he needs for the film. And while there are many things his talented pal Johnny Depp can do, he can’t actually age backwards without expensive Benjamin Button-style CG trickery. Thank goodness, then, that the pool of young actors has offered up Thomas McDonell, who could easily pass for a more youthful Depp.
Which might be why Burton has cast him to play the young Barnabas Collins in Shadows alongside the likes of Michelle Pfeiffer, Bella Heathcote, Eva Green, Helena Bonham Carter and Jackie Earle Haley in the filmic adaptation of the gothic horror soap opera. Oh, and there’s also a chance that Michael Sheen – who voiced the White Rabbit for Burton’s Alice in Wonderland – will also hop aboard this to play Roger, the scheming brother of Pfeiffer’s Elizabeth Collins Stoddard.
McDonell has a fairly shot CV to date with the obligatory appearance on Law & Order and small roles in The Forbidden Kingdom and Joel Schumacher’s Twelve. But he’s about to get a little more well known thanks to a starring part in Disney’s new teen movie Prom. In Shadows, he and Depp will both play vampire Barnabas Collins, which makes us assume that we’ll see how Collins becomes one of the undead, since they don’t usually tend to age once bitten.