Humbert Allen Astredo, a stage actor who played opposite James Earl Jones, Frank Langella and Elizabeth Taylor but is best remembered by generations of scared kids as the evil, devil-bearded warlock of Dark Shadows, died February 19 at the age of 86. No cause of death was given in a paid death notice published today…

Lela Swift, who rose from the secretarial pool at CBS to become a pioneering force for female TV directors, died today at her Santa Monica home of natural causes. She was 96. Swift went from gopher to an AD job on the network’s Studio One in 1948, to directing nearly 600 episodes of Dark Shadows and winning three…

SUNDAY AM, 9TH UPDATE:  North American grosses came in exactly as expected. Marvel’s The Avengers from Disney broke $100M in its second weekend for the first time in movie history (beating Avatar‘s 75M). Saturday’s number is about $43.1M after Friday’s was $29.1M for an estimated weekend total of $103.2M with Sunday’s…

The 10 minutes of The Hobbit footage unveiled during Warner Bros’ slate presentation at CinemaCon today might have garnered the least-enthusiastic response among attendees of the studio’s summer slate presentation for exhibitors. That despite its revolutionary 48-frames-per-second format that left the crowd torn over…

Jonathan Frid, star of the original Dark Shadows, has died He was 87. The Canadian actor, who passed away Friday in his hometown of Hamilton, Ontario, played benign vampire Barnabas Collins on ABC’s gothic soap opera from 1967-71 and in the 1970 movie House Of Dark Shadows. Frid also has a cameo in Warner Bros…

EXCLUSIVE: Paramount Pictures will change the opening date of its Sacha Baron Cohen-starrer The Dictator forward five days, moving from May 11 to its new date on Wednesday May 16. That is being done to avoid a head to head showdown against Warner Bros’ Dark Shadows. The move was made after a trailer for the Tim…

Warner Bros and Village Roadshow have released the first full trailer for the May 11 release, Dark Shadows, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eva Green, Chloe Grace Moretz and Jonny Lee Miller. As the trailer makes clear, Burton is playing for laughs the gothic story of vampire…

Talking to MTV after the Britannia Awards, the actress describes her role as Dr. Julia Hoffman: “She’s an alcoholic psychiatrist, so I hadn’t played that before. And she’s got a secret. They all have secrets. It’s all about people who have secrets.” The movie as a whole? “It’s very original and it’s kind of…

Prime Minister David Cameron has announced that film tax relief will be extended for four more years until the end of December 2015. It had been due to expire March next year. The UK tax break is worth 16% of the budgets of Hollywood movies shooting over here, and 20% of the budgets for local films. The news is…

Warner Bros will release Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows on May 11, 2012, and the Will Ferrell-Zach Galifianakis starrer Rivals on Aug. 10, 2012, the studio announced today. Dark Shadows, based on the cult TV series, stars Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Helena Bonham Carter, Eva Green and Jackie Earle Haley. Rivals…

Tim Burton’s cast for Dark Shadows gets better and better. Kick-Ass star Chloe Moretz is now in talks to join the Warner Bros drama based on the 60s TV soap. Moretz will play Carolyn. She’s the daughter of Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer), the reclusive matriarch of the Collins clan and owner of the…

Tim Burton has set Gulliver McGrath to play the role of David Collins in Dark Shadows. It was a coveted role on the pint-sized set, and I’ve heard Burton has his sights on Michael Sheen to play his father, Roger Collins. The young Australian actor made it to the finals for the lead in Martin Scorsese’s Hugo Cabret…