Writes Deadline in an exclusive report, "Depp had fond memories of the ABC telepic and series The Night Stalker, and got Disney's Rich Ross and Sean Bailey sparked on a pitch for Depp to potentially play tabloid reporter Carl Kolchak. Originated by Darren McGavin, Kolchak was the dogged journalist first seen in the 1972 telepic (where he hunted a killer who was draining the blood of beautiful girls on the Las Vegas strip) and later in the ABC series Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Kolchak's investigations always seemed to lead him to the doorstep of vampires, zombies, werewolves and aliens. For its time, it was pretty scary stuff. The studio will go out to writers shortly. David Kennedy will be exec producer."
Deadline failed to mention that there was a 1973 TV movie called The Night Strangler (co-starring Richard Dean Anderson as the creature, soon to be cast as Oscar Goldman in The Six Million Dollar Man). There was also a teleplay for a third TV movie called The Night Killers, about robot duplicates being put in the place of people in crucial power positions. Additionally, in 2005 X-Files producer Frank Spotnitz served as the guiding force behind a revamped version of the show, there have been a number of novels and a wide variety of comic book adventures as well.
The two TV movies were directed by Dark Shadows creator Dan Curtis and written by legendary writer Richard Matheson. The '70s TV series was guided by David Chase, who would go on to create The Sopranos.
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