Burton & Depp to Reteam for Sweeney Todd?
Source: MovieMusicals.net January 7, 2006
MovieMusicals.net is reporting that director Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, who have teamed up five times already and most recently for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, will reunite once again for the adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's musical Sweeney Todd.
This would be the second time Burton will try to get the film made - his previous incarnation at Warner Bros. fell apart years ago. Since then, Jarhead director Sam Mendes has had talks to make the movie as well.
The site says that Depp will play the title character Sweeney Todd, the demon barber or Fleet Street. Here is the official description:
The legendary barber, hell-bent on revenge, takes up with his enterprising neighbor in a delicious plot to slice their way through London's upper crust. Justice will be served - along with lush melody, audacious humor and bloody good thrills.
The musical premiered in 1979, when it won eight Tony Awards including Best Musical. The show is currently on Broadway in its second revival. You can learn more about the musical at the official website.
That sound you just heard was me shooting myself in the face.
I don't know what would be worse; using the original songs, or having Danny Elfman pull something out of his ass like he did in "Chocolate Factory"?
Can't we just leave stage musicals to the stage, where they're so much easier to ignore?
Burton goes from Ripley to 'Sweeney'
Source: Hollywood Reporter
Paramount Pictures chairman Brad Grey has exchanged one big-budget Tim Burton project for another: He has sent "Believe It or Not" back into development while Stacey Snider, CEO and co-chairman of Paramount's DreamWorks, is putting "Sweeney Todd" on the fast track with Burton at the helm. DreamWorks will now need to assemble and cast that movie, which is a project adapted by John Logan ("The Aviator") from the Stephen Sondheim Broadway musical. Burton already is talking with Johnny Depp for the lead role as the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Paramount sources said. Burton and producers Richard Zanuck, Sean Daniel and Jim Jacks had been fighting the battle of the budget bulge on "Believe," starring Jim Carrey. But Grey refused to give the project a green light until the ambitious production, based on the adventurer Ripley, fell into the $150 million range, co-president of production Brad Weston confirmed.
Yes!!! He's been wanting to do this for well over a decade. This is something worth looking forward to, rather than another director-for-hire thing.
Johnny Depp should be Ripley and should grin like Ed Wood through the whole movie. Anyway, Ripley is much more a Burton character than Todd, as he's a innocent naive white guy who goes into some foriegn situation and has crazy experiences! Just like most of his other characters! Think about it!
Source: MTV
When they first collaborated for "Edward Scissorhands," Tim Burton was an up-and-coming director and Johnny Depp was looking to sidestep his burgeoning hunky heartthrob image. A decade and a half later, the A-list "Pirates of the Caribbean" star and the director of "Planet of the Apes"-type blockbusters are making plans to reunite yet again. "It's something Tim and I have talked about," Depp said recently of "Sweeney Todd," a big-screen adaptation of the grisly Broadway musical. "We've sort of talked about the idea since years and years ago. We've been speaking about it here and there recently, and it looks like it's looking very good." The flick will feature Depp in his first major singing role, but the actor thinks that nervousness won't be a problem since he'll be working under the trusting eye of an old friend. "I sure hope it happens because, God — just to go back to work for Tim again, it'd be our sixth movie together," Depp grinned. "It's looking very good."
Sweeney Todd Set
Depp, Burton reteam for musical.
It was officially announced today that Johnny Depp and director Tim Burton are set to reunite for Sweeney Todd, the big-screen version of Stephen Sondheim's musical thriller. It will be their sixth time working together.
Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald will partner with Richard Zanuck and John Logan to produce the screenplay adaptation which was written by Logan.
The film will be a co-production between DreamWorks Studios and Warner Bros. Paramount will distribute for DreamWorks domestically and Warner Bros. internationally.
Depp will portray Sweeney Todd, the so-called Demon Barber of Fleet Street. The award-winning musical's plot follows a wrongfully imprisoned barber in Victorian England who sets out to seek revenge on the judge who imprisoned him. The Broadway production, which opened in 1979, was based on the play by Christopher Bond.
Its mix of the comic, the dramatic and the macabre held together by Sondheim's movie-like score has had hundreds of productions throughout the world. A highly acclaimed revival is now playing in New York.
Cohen may join Depp in Burton's 'Sweeney Todd'
Source: Production Weekly
Sacha Baron Cohen is in negotiations to star opposite Johnny Depp in Tim Burton's film version of the musical "Sweeney Todd." Stephen Sondheim musical thriller revolves around Benjamin Barker alias Sweeney Todd, (Depp) who returns to London after being deported to find out what happened to his wife and child at the hands of Judge Turpin. When he learns of their terrible fate he joins fortunes with Mrs. Nellie Lovett, the baker downstairs from his barbershop, and sets out to seek revenge. Cohen will play Signor Adolfo Pirelli, Todd's competitor in the haircutting world.
Production set to begin shooting in early February at Pinewood Studios near London. Pre-recordings will begin in November and December. Burton also has a history with the complex in which he filmed "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "The Planet of the Apes" and "Batman."
Carter Cast in Burton's Sweeney Todd
Source: Variety
Helena Bonham Carter will play the diabolical meat pie-maker Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, says Variety.
Director Tim Burton tapped Carter to co-star with Johnny Depp in the DreamWorks Studios and Warner Bros. co-production of the Stephen Sondheim musical. John Logan wrote the screenplay.
Mrs. Lovett, a role originated onstage by Angela Lansbury, is a murderess who dispenses her victims' bodies in meat pies and becomes the amorous accomplice of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. In most stage productions, Mrs. Lovett has been about a decade older than the Demon Barber and is usually someone in her 50s; Carter and Depp are about the same age and in their early 40s.
Borat star Sacha Baron Cohen is rumored to be circling the role of rival barber Signor Adolfo Pirelli, but the studio would not confirm whether he'll be part of the mix.
Shooting begins in early next year for a late 2007 release, with Paramount distributing domestically for DreamWorks, and Warner Bros. handling international territories.
Carter, Burton's longtime off-screen partner, has been a regular collaborator onscreen. She has starred in the Burton-directed films Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Big Fish and Planet of the Apes, and provided the title voice for Tim Burton's Corpse Bride.
Carter, who will sing in the film, just wrapped Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Source: MTV
Maestro of the macabre Tim Burton is almost ready to begin rolling on "Sweeney Todd," a bloody barber tale he envisions as a hard R-rated horror flick. "You can't really skimp on that stuff — it's got to be what it is. It's not going to be a G-rated movie, no," he laughed. "It's kind of like doing 'The Sound of Music' but with lots of blood, so I don't know how that's going to work out. We'll see. I'm excited to try it." Burton's also excited to unveil the vocal work of frequent leading man Johnny Depp, who'll take on his first singing role in his 20-plus-year career. "It's going to be the [actors singing]. That's important. It's a movie, it's not a Milli Vanilli record," the "Nightmare Before Christmas" mastermind insisted. So is Burton concerned about gambling his multimillion-dollar movie on a singing voice he's never even heard? "No. I go over to his house and we sing show tunes every night. It's a ritual with us," he laughed. "Johnny is great. ... I'm always looking for some new kind of challenge, and this certainly is that. We are laughing about it already, and we haven't even started yet." Another actor who'll be exercising her vocal cords is Burton's girlfriend, Helena Bonham Carter. But the director insisted — contrary to reports — that "Borat" star Sacha Baron Cohen is not on board. "We don't know that for sure yet," he said of the chameleon-esque comedian. "We're still in the early stages of talking to people."
Cohen to cut chops on 'Sweeney Todd'
Thesp signs on for role in Burton pic
Source: Variety
Sacha Baron Cohen has firmed plans to follow "Borat" with some barbering in "Sweeney Todd," the screen version of the Stephen Sondheim musical Tim Burton will shoot for DreamWorks and Warner Bros.
Cohen will play Signor Adolfo Pirelli, a barber who becomes the nemesis of Sweeney Todd. Todd's the barber who teams with the murderess Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) to kill people, grind them up and use them in her meat pies.
Cohen will be putting in only a couple weeks of work.
Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald are producing with Richard D. Zanuck and John Logan. Logan wrote the script.
Since "Sweeney Todd" shoots in London in February, the picture is the next up for Cohen. The musical offers him the opportunity to create another eclectic character, as he did when he played the race car driver Jean Girard in "Talladega Nights."
As "Borat" continues to establish itself as a box office juggernaut, Cohen has just begun working out the story beats of "Bruno," the feature he'll make for Universal, playing the Austrian fashion reporter character he created for "Da Ali G Show."
"Bruno" is on course to shoot next year. Also looming for Cohen are two longstanding acting attachments, in the Tina Fey-scripted "Curly Oxide and Vic Thrill" at Paramount, and the remake of the Francis Veber comedy "Dinner for Schmucks" at DreamWorks.
Johnny Depp's 'Sweeney Todd' Role Upsets Girlfriend
Source: Starpulse
Johnny Depp is terrifying his long-term partner Vanessa Paradis by going to extreme lengths to get into his new role as Demon Barber Sweeney Todd. Depp starts rehearsals for the film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's musical in London next month, but he's preparing for the part already by slitting imaginary throats to the soundtrack of Dies Irae (Day Of Wrath) - the 13th century Latin Hymn traditionally used in the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass.
A source tells British newspaper the Daily Express, "Johnny is always very conscientious in his roles. Now he says he has to get into the mind set of a serial killer. He wants to feel adept with the razor blades, to feel as if they were an extension of his arm. But he's terrifying everyone by walking around his home booming out the song - making an arc with his arm when he slits a person's throat. Sweeney calls his razors his 'friends' and in this song the Demon Barber pours out his love to his blades."
Thats hilarious... can you imagine Johnny Depp walking around the house in his underwear singing that and making those gestures?
Alan Rickman Joins Sweeney Todd
Source: Screen Daily
Alan Rickman will play Judge Turpin in Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd, reports Screen Daily. He joins Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter in the DreamWorks Studios and Warner Bros. co-production, based on the award-winning Stephen Sondheim musical thriller.
The story of Sweeney Todd is of a wrongfully imprisoned barber in Victorian England who sets out to seek revenge on the judge who imprisoned him. The plot is foreshadowed in the first lines of the opening number: "Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd./His skin was pale and his eye was odd./He shaved the faces of gentlemen/Who never thereafter were heard of again."
Production is planned to begin early in 2007 for release late that year. Paramount will distribute for DreamWorks domestically and Warner Bros. internationally.
Borat Raps Burton's Todd
Sondheim musical to get hip-hop infusion.
According to The Sun, Sacha Baron Cohen's singing voice is so bad that director Tim Burton has had to resort to the proverbial plan B for his feature version of Stephen Sondheim's Broadway musical hit Sweeney Todd.
Cohen plays Italian tonic salesman and barber Adolfo Pirelli, the hairdressing rival of Sweeney Todd (Johnny Depp), the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
The report says Cohen simply couldn't perform the operatic tunes required for the role. "There was never any question of Sacha being axed from the movie," an alleged insider advised the paper. "He is going to do a fantastic job. But he couldn't cut it with the singing. His voice was too low."
So the filmmakers have decided to let Cohen perform Pirelli's songs a little differently. "Sacha has been told to go for a rap style," claimed the source. "It will be a bit like Jim Broadbent's performance in Moulin Rouge."
Verdict is in: Rickman to judge 'Todd'
Source: Hollywood Reporter
Alan Rickman has signed on for Tim Burton's ensemble musical "Sweeney Todd," a DreamWorks Studios and Warner Bros. Pictures co-production.
Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen already have boarded the project, based on the macabre Stephen Sondheim Broadway musical. Rickman, no stranger to the stage, has been nominated for two Tonys and is a U.K. theater veteran. He will play Judge Turpin in the film, scheduled to begin production next month in London.
The film centers on Benjamin Barker (Depp), a man unjustly imprisoned by a lecherous judge (Rickman). Barker returns as barber Sweeney Todd and exacts revenge. John Logan penned the big-screen adaptation.
Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald, Richard D. Zanuck and Logan are producing.
Paramount Pictures will distribute for DreamWorks domestically, and Warners will distribute internationally.
Rickman, whose credits include "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer" and the "Harry Potter" films, recently wrapped "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix."
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Sweeney Todd Starts Singing
Burton's musical begins filming.
Principal photography has begun at England's Pinewood Studios on Sweeney Todd, starring Johnny Depp in the Tim Burton directed screen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's award-winning musical thriller. The DreamWorks Pictures and Warner Bros. co-production marks the sixth collaboration between Depp and Burton.
Sweeney Todd is produced by Richard D. Zanuck, Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald, and John Logan from a screenplay by Logan. The original Broadway production had Sondheim's music and lyrics and a book by Hugh Wheeler based on a play by Christopher Bond. It won eight Tony Awards including Best Musical.
Depp stars as Sweeney Todd, a man unjustly sent to prison, who vows revenge not only for that cruel punishment but for the devastating consequences of what happened to his wife and daughter. When he returns to reopen his barbershop, he becomes the Demon Barber of Fleet Street who "shaved the heads of gentleman who never thereafter were heard from again."
Helena Bonham Carter co-stars as Mrs. Lovett, who creates her diabolical meat pies while becoming Sweeney's amorous accomplice. Alan Rickman is the evil Judge Turpin who sent him unfairly to prison, thereby sowing the seeds of Sweeney's vengeance. Timothy Spall plays the Judge's wicked associate Beadle Bamford. Sacha Baron Cohen is a rival barber, the flamboyant Signor Adolfo Pirelli, and Christopher Lee takes on the role of the gentleman ghost.
Rounding out the cast are Jamie Campbell Bowen as the young sailor Anthony, Jayne Wisener as Johanna, Laura Michelle Kelly as the beggar woman, and newcomer Ed Sanders plays Toby. All the stars will do their own singing from Stephen Sondheim's music and lyrics.
"I've always wanted to do a musical and Sweeney Todd is my favorite," said Burton. "Stephen's blend of humor, horror and emotion is something that has always connected with me."
"Sometimes a story or stage production has to wait a long time until the right people come together to turn it into a motion picture," Sondheim said in a statement. "That's what has happened with Sweeney Todd and I'm excited as well as confident that it will be a first-rate and startling movie."
The crew includes director of photography Dariusz Wolski (the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy), production designer Dante Ferrati (The Aviator), costume designer Colleen Atwood (Memoirs of a Geisha), hair and make up designer Peter Owen (The Lord of the Rings), and Burton's veteran editor Chris Lebenzon.
Sweeney Todd will be distributed domestically by Paramount for a late 2007 release and distributed internationally by Warner Bros.
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haha, somebody's been reading perez...
I've read the script for this. I do not think it will make a good film.
Quote from: for petes sake on March 28, 2007, 07:46:22 PM
I've read the script for this. I do not think it will make a good film.
does that include songs and music and all that? cos most musicals have pretty shitty scripts sans music.
Quote from: Pubrick on March 29, 2007, 12:09:49 AM
Quote from: for petes sake on March 28, 2007, 07:46:22 PM
I've read the script for this. I do not think it will make a good film.
does that include songs and music and all that? cos most musicals have pretty shitty scripts sans music.
ahem...
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i beg to differ.
Quote from: MacGuffin on March 28, 2007, 12:22:32 AM
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Its Vince Froio.
Christopher Lee Cut From Sweeney Todd
Source: Playbill
Playbill reports that Christopher Lee and a number of other characters have been cut from director Tim Burton's upcoming Sweeney Todd adaptation, starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.
DreamWorks has confirmed reports that the ghost characters — including Lee's "Gentleman Ghost," as a previous release titled his role — have been cut from the film.
The new "Gentleman Ghost" character raised many inquisitive eyebrows when Tim Burton's film cast was announced, since the stage musical does not employ such a character.
Lee told London's Telegraph: "It would have been worse if I had done the scenes, but I never got to film them. It's a shame as the lyrics were wonderful, but these things happen."
Sweeney Todd opens in limited theaters on December 21 and expands on January 11.
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awesome
hot
Edward Scissorhands' Series of Unfortunate Events
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Sweeney Todd
Source: Entertainment Weekly
A bloody musical about a homicidal barber and his human-pie-making partner doesn't exactly sound like standard Christmas viewing, but that doesn't bother director Tim Burton (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). ''Red is a color at Christmas,'' he jokes. Actually, the director thinks that his adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's classic musical might make for a better Valentine's Day option. ''For me, it sort of sums up relationships,'' says the director. ''Although people might be horrified by that.''
The movie's unrequited-love story also appealed to Helena Bonham Carter, who, fortunately for Burton, is his real-life paramour. ''There's still such a humanity to it, and that's what Tim always brings,'' says the actress, who plays the bizarro baker. Still, Bonham Carter admits that working with her significant other ''has its stresses.'' Luckily, her costar is more or less unflappable. ''[Johnny Depp] was really diplomatic. Whenever Tim and I started arguing, he would just look away.'' Burton considers this film one of his most challenging productions yet, which means a lot coming from the director of Beetlejuice, Batman, and Edward Scissorhands. ''To do an R-rated musical with 70 percent singing was kinda like, 'Well, I haven't done that one before.' It's exciting to keep surprising yourself and see what happens.''
Depp, like most of the cast (including Sacha Baron Cohen as a rival barber in his first post-Borat role), signed on having little or no professional singing experience. ''He was game for it,'' Burton says of Depp. ''When I first heard him, I was amazed.''
The vocals were more taxing on Bonham Carter, who felt like she was training for ''a sport.'' She also logged hours in the kitchen in an effort to learn the fine art of baking. ''I had to do accelerated lessons at pie making,'' she says. ''Not only that, but then you had to do it to syncopated Sondheim rhythm and sing at the same time. I had to become very coordinated.'' More enjoyable was her transformation into ghostly Mrs. Lovett. ''The look is fantastic,'' she says. ''I'd wear this makeup anyway. But it might start a whole craze.'' Let's just hope her recipes don't catch on.
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'Sweeney' gets Christmas premiere
Johnny Depp musical to open Dec. 21
Source: Variety
Johnny Depp will be singing in time for Christmas -- everywhere.
DreamWorks and Paramount have decided to go wide with director Tim Burton's bigscreen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Broadway musical "Sweeney Todd" on Dec. 21, versus a platform release.
Original plan was to give the film a limited bow on the 21st and then go wide on Jan. 11, the thought being that "Sweeney Todd" is less commercial and less accessible than most musicals because of its darker storyline. Along those lines, a platform opening would provide a chance to build buzz.
However, when DreamWorks execs began seeing clips from "Sweeney," they realized it had far broader appeal, particularly with Depp starring as the revenge-seeking barber of Fleet Street who uses his blade in gruesome ways to seek justice for the deaths of his wife and child.
The hope is that "Sweeney" will be the sort of signature role for Depp that Captain Jack Sparrow in Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise was.
DreamWorks and Warner Bros. are partners on "Sweeney," with DreamWorks/Paramount handling domestic. Warners will release the musical overseas. The studios believe "Sweeney" will work as a holiday pic.
Also opening wide on Dec. 21 are Disney's sequel "National Treasure: Book of Secrets"; Warner Bros.' dramedy "P.S., I Love You," starring Gerard Butler and Hilary Swank; and Sony laffer "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," penned by Judd Apatow and Jake Kasdan, who directed. Limited releases include "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly."
"Sweeney" producer Dick Zanuck and Burton already had been pushing for a wide bow, expressing concerns that a platform release could give the impression it was an arthouse title.
At the same time, DreamWorks and Paramount aren't likely to go out with "Sweeney," which is expected to receive an R rating, on more than 1,500 screens. At least that's the thinking at this point.
Trailer here. (http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809834155/video/4367764/)
Sleepy Hollow 2: Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer (The Musical)
Quote from: modage on October 04, 2007, 02:43:15 PM
Sleepy Hollow 2: Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer... A Murderer With The Voice of Jack Sparrow That Is (The Musical)
New Trailer here. (http://streamos.nonesuch.com/qtime/nonesuch/sweeneytodd/sweeney_todd_trailer.mov)
oh i get it. its not a musical!
D'Works/Par seeks perfect pitch for 'Todd'
Source: Hollywood Reporter
NEW YORK -- The Stephen Sondheim musical "Sweeney Todd" tells the morally complex story of a wronged barber who takes a bloody knife to patrons of his London shop.
But it's nothing compared with the complexity faced by DreamWorks/Paramount in releasing the R-rated musical.
"This has many niche audiences that need to be dealt with, and they don't really cross," said Terry Press, the marketing guru who is consulting on the film for DreamWorks. "There are 'Sweeney Todd' freaks, there's a sophisticated theatergoer crowd, there are the Tim Burton fans, and there are the young girls who love Johnny Depp. It's like threading many needles."
On top of that there's this prickly issue: The movie isn't done yet.
Burton said in an interview Wednesday that sound and visuals are still being mixed. "Probably about two weeks," he said. "I hope."
Still, the studio took the wraps off the Burton-Depp collaboration Wednesday night at a Film Society of Lincoln Center event in New York -- a venue whose appeal lies squarely with the theater crowd -- bringing out Burton to talk up the process of directing a musical and showing 20 minutes of footage including several Depp musical numbers for the first time in North America.
Outside of a Venice Film Festival event, it was the first public unspooling of the film, which has been the subject of a quiet, even stealth campaign since being put on the calendar for a December release. There have been the occasional peeks -- posters at Comic-Con International, a feature in Entertainment Weekly -- but for a movie going wide in five weeks, the rollout has been unusually low-key.
If the studio has been cautious, it's because "Todd" must balance some unwieldy trays.
As a blood-spattered, tragic story told partly in song, it must avoid looking like too much of a songfest so as not to put off Burton fans. But it also must stop shy of seeming too dark and turning off the musical crowd -- all while appeasing voluble "Todd"-heads, who on fan sites have for months parsed every note that may or may not survive the transition to the big screen.
In other words, the stylish gore has to come in equal proportion to the music.
"All these things that could be described as difficulties could also be the movie's greatest strengths," said Walter Parkes, a producer on "Todd." "But it's a challenge, no doubt."
Those challenges has been evident in several aspects of the movie's production and marketing. Instead of playing musical numbers over dialogue-free images, a trailer features only a few seconds of music, delineating story instead.
The questions about how to release the movie are reflected in a two-headed approach that's tried to keep a lid on hype while still aiming big at the boxoffice.
Heartened by Depp's bankability, the studio in August reversed a plan to platform the movie and decided to open on as many as 700 or 800 screens the weekend before Christmas.
But at the same time, lurking behind the DreamWorks campaign is the studio's push for another (admittedly very different) musical last year: "Dreamgirls."
Footage for that film was screened six months ahead of release at May's Festival de Cannes, and awards talk began pretty much at the start of the season. According to some observers, the movie peaked too soon, and AMPAS looked elsewhere for best picture.
So "Todd" is taking an approach more akin to Warners' tack with "The Departed" last year: keeping the early exposure limited and discouraging preliminary awards talk. (Warners actually is handling the international release of "Todd.")
Of course, the fact that the movie isn't finished also has something to do with the quiet rollout -- "a mix of circumstance and intention," in one insider's description.
Still, the quiet hasn't stopped blogs from drawing hard-core Sondheim fans -- the kind who "really want an image of Betsy Joslyn from the 1982 DVD" -- wringing their hands with lines like, "I wonder what great songs they're going to cut from this movie."
A few posts down came a reaction that may encapsulate the DreamWorks challenge more succinctly: "Whoa, wait -- this is a musical?"
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Tim Burton's slasher film
The filmmaker's seductively dark visions find a new outlet in 'Sweeney Todd,' the musical tale of a vengeance-minded barber.
By Paul Brownfield, Los Angeles Times
TIM BURTON had already traipsed through China, scouting locations for his next big cinematic event, "Ripley's Believe It or Not!," starring Jim Carrey, when Paramount halted pre-production on the film.
Burton describes himself as "pretty devastated" by the development. Robert Ripley was a California-born cartoonist, newspaper columnist and worldwide seeker of curiosities; he once aspired to a career as a pro baseball player. Burton too is California born, the son of a former minor league ballplayer. An inveterate sketcher, he became a filmmaker, populating his movies with a circus-like array of freaks, outcasts and curiosities.
"I know it's a business," Burton said the other week, the frustration evident in his voice. "But for those of us working on the film, you get excited, and it's an art form. They should feel lucky that you treat it like an art form."
Burton didn't have to brood all that long, though, for another long-gestating project suddenly found life -- a big-screen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," starring Burton's frequent doppelgänger of a movie star, Johnny Depp.
Still, "Sweeney" was no slam dunk. Although recent screen adaptations of the musicals "Chicago" and "Dreamgirls" have been smash hits, "Sweeney Todd" is a different kind of beast. How do you solve a problem like a bloody, R-rated musical about a serial killer, starring movie actors who aren't professional singers?
One way is by giving it to Burton, who has long maintained a head-turning aplomb as he presents each new theatrical entertainment. "Sweeney Todd" nevertheless comes at an interesting time for the 49-year-old director. Burton is a genre unto himself, but maybe lately too unto himself. His brand has lost some of its panache as he's delved into expensive remakes like "Planet of the Apes" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," neither of which was highly regarded.
"Sweeney Todd," which opens Dec. 21, is another ambitious reimagining of a venerable text. The result is a beautifully scored, high-art slasher film, told almost entirely in song and topped off with Depp paying homage to Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff.
Tim Burton, just in time for the holidays.
The making of meat pies
"HAVE you ever had a shave before like that?" Burton said last month in New York of the cringe-worthy aspect of seeing a straight razor hover over an Adam's apple and delicately glide along skin.
"There are places that do it, there are places in London, there are places here. . . . There's quite a vulnerable situation. You know, you're letting some guy that you don't know stick a razor at your throat."
"Sweeney Todd" costars Burton's companion, Helena Bonham Carter, as the meat-pie-making Mrs. Lovett, Alan Rickman as the evil Judge Turpin and Timothy Spall as Beadle Bamford. The story, with its origins as pulp magazine fodder in Victorian England, went through various literary interpretations before Sondheim's operatic 1979 Broadway musical, which starred Len Cariou as Todd and Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett.
Burton first saw the show as a twentysomething CalArts student on holiday in London; he went back over consecutive nights, dazzled both by the music and its sense of the macabre. There is about Todd the mythology of a monster -- a barber turned homicidal maniac after being wrongfully exiled, who then teams with the also-nutty Mrs. Lovett to turn the London gentry into the filling for her meat pies.
Burton started to adapt the musical years ago before getting sidetracked; a movie version was at one time also attached to "American Beauty" director Sam Mendes. According to Burton and producer Richard D. Zanuck, the project fell together again quickly. Zanuck was standing outside an art gallery on La Cienega the night he heard that Paramount was suspending "Ripley's." Inside the gallery, as it happened, was Depp, with a similar hole in his schedule.
The pairing of Depp, with dead eyes and big, scary hair, and Bonham Carter lends a different vibe to the twisted relationship between Todd and Mrs. Lovett. They're almost heroin-chic-looking, the guy thirsting for blood and the girl counseling patience. They don't exactly have heart-to-hearts; as played, the comedy is so dark it's subterranean. Burton likens his "Sweeney" to a relationship movie.
Last month, while Burton was in New York working on the sound, Zanuck was in L.A., hustling a nearly complete version to various studio screenings. Burton, who trained in the business as an animator, will tell you he has never had an easy alliance with big studios, even as he continues to be in business with them. He lives in London and comes to L.A. as seldom as he can, he said, leaving much of the studio interaction to his producer.
With "Sweeney," the hope is that Depp fans (i.e. young girls) and core Burton loyalists will support the box office. Still, it took three studios (Warner Bros., DreamWorks and Paramount) to back a budget of about $50 million; Burton shot the film in less than three months at Pinewood Studios outside London.
"I would have liked a couple more days of shooting things, but, you know, it is what it is," he said. "There's a certain energy to it that's fine. . . . You know what? I prefer it this way. You can have a $200-million budget and feel like you're being choked to death."
In New York, Burton's spartan office had an Elvis throw rug. A Japanese toy version of Willy Wonka, an ode to his "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," sat on the windowsill, still in its box. He seemed harried but engaged; he tends to chase his thoughts as he talks. At one point, the lapel of his jacket quivered as his leg jiggled under the desk. There was another month to go of post-production, while back home Bonham Carter was nearing completion on their second child (she is due in December).
Burton fell in love with London when he was making the first installment in the "Batman" series. "I had this, like, weird past life experience," he said. "I don't get that kind of New-Agey kind of feeling very often, but I just felt, 'Wow, I feel very much at home here.' "
His own back story, given his current station, is kind of remarkable: born and raised in Burbank to a father who worked for the parks and recreation department and a mother who once had a gift store for cats. He escaped into movies and TV more than books and theater. A conversation about eating alone while traveling reminded Burton of a job he once had at a restaurant called Sir George's Smorgasbord on Riverside Drive.
"A meal fit for a king," he deadpanned. "It was closed down by the health department, finally."
Mechanics of a killing machine
IN the film, Todd's first kill is the blackmailing rival barber Pirelli (Sacha Baron Cohen of "Borat" fame in an electric blue jumpsuit). Blood shoots freely from Pirelli's neck.
Burton has long thought the violence in the show was more illustrative than literal -- an orgiastic release. There were Internet rumors that he was being made to cut back on the gore, which he says isn't true; he says he warned executives early on. "The first thing that came out of my mouth was, 'There's going to be blood in the movie, so don't even ask.' " Burton said he told executives.
Some of his artistic team are new collaborators: cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, who did the "Pirates of the Caribbean" blockbusters, and production designer Dante Ferretti, an Oscar winner on Martin Scorsese's "The Aviator." "Sweeney Todd" is lushly beautiful in its sepia-toned gothicness, a Burton trademark. London is shrouded in fog, the sun just a rumor.
But really the film costars Burton's dreamlike style with Depp's latest acting choice. Their last project together, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," had a mansion that melts in the heat and Depp seeming to channel Michael Jackson and/or Carol Channing as Wonka.
This time around, Depp has gone off into the ornate insularity of Chaney and Karloff, actors who Burton feels moved in a style all their own. John Logan, who wrote the screenplay, said he and Burton share "stunted childhoods watching Amicus movies," referring to the British company that in the 1960s and '70s produced films such as "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors" and "The House That Dripped Blood."
Here, that aesthetic gets married to Sondheim's music, re-recorded by a 78-piece orchestra. Even by Burton's standards for opening titles, the one for "Sweeney Todd" -- the Bernard Herrmann-esque overture booming as the camera takes a fetishistic tour of Todd and Lovett's killing machine -- is exhilarating.
Burton didn't want patches of dialogue interrupted by song, as is traditional. He cut the show's famous opening number, "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd." Why have a chorus singing about "attending the tale of Sweeney Todd" when you could just go ahead and attend it?
Sondheim had final approval of the cast, although Burton says the finicky composer mostly stayed out of the way.
"I had a lot more traffic with him than Tim realizes," said Zanuck, later hastening to add that Sondheim loved the finished work.
Previous attempts to turn Sondheim's musicals into feature films -- "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" and "A Little Night Music" -- have been less than successful, and no one, perhaps, is more qualified to discuss the risk of big-studio musicals than Zanuck. 20th Century Fox, while he headed it, made such films as "The French Connection" and "MASH," and later, with David Brown, he produced "Jaws." But Zanuck also presided over the box office musical flops "Hello, Dolly!" "Star!" and "Dr. Dolittle."
Zanuck recalled that Sondheim, before seeing a screening of Burton's film, asked: " 'Richard, am I going to like this movie?' "
" 'If you can leave Stephen Sondheim in the hotel, if you go as a movie fan, just lean back and enjoy it,' " Zanuck said he told him. " 'I'll supply the popcorn, you just be the fan.' "
"And he looked at me and said, 'You haven't answered my question.' "
If "Ed Wood" and "Edward Scissorhands" put him on the map, "Big Fish," which came out in 2003, was unusual in that it was the first time that Burton seemed to ask himself why he was drawn to the fantastical in the first place. It will be interesting to see if "Sweeney Todd" is received as a mainstream masterwork or further evidence of Burton's growing reputation as a filmmaker who visualizes stories more than he tells them.
Though his animated "Corpse Bride" was nominated for an Oscar, Burton's live-action work hasn't, and none of his films is on the American Film Institute's top 100 list. He claims that even his first feature, "Pee-wee's Big Adventure," made a lot of worst 10 lists and wasn't appreciated until years later. "The same thing with 'Beetlejuice,' " he said. Reminded that the late New Yorker critic Pauline Kael had loved "Pee-wee," Burton said: "That was kind of an amazing thing, because that was one of the rare ones."
Next for the director is a 3-D version of "Alice in Wonderland" and the remake of his 1984 short "Frankenweenie" for Disney.
Through it all, Burton has remained true to the thing that he does. Told that he seems to have waded into "Sweeney Todd" without feeling the need to steep himself in the entire history of musical theater, he laughed and said: "You're pointing out something; that's why I loved doing 'Ed Wood' so much. I loved that character because he either didn't know he was delusional, or whatever, but it didn't matter."
"Ed Wood," which came out in 1994, was Burton's high-spirited, black-and-white paean to the so-called worst director of all time. In Burton's hands, Wood became an enduring symbol of the filmmaking art as hope beyond all reason.
"That's why I responded to that movie and that character so much, because it's exactly true," Burton was saying. "And I feel kind of blessed with it in a way, because . . . I do worry about certain things, but I also don't, in a way. Which is why I'm able to do things. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to do it."
Just saw a screening of this. I know next to nothing about Sweeney Todd, except for the revenge aspect and whatever was mentioned in Jersey Girl.
I feel like it's nothing new, we've seen it before. Dreary, gloomy London, HBC as Marla Singer, a gaunt, baggy-eyed Johnny Depp, Alan Rickman being mean, and a young female who looks exactly like Christina Ricci in Sleepy Hollow. Nothing really impressed me, and when my friends said they loved it, I was pretty surprised. I did enjoy some of the movie, but overall it had very boring visuals. I mean, Burton knows how to make the characters, set, and production value look completely unique, but the compositions were very bland.
I didn't want something like Chicago or Moulin Rouge, but that doesn't mean the film had to lack any visual style. POSSIBLE SPOILERS I mean, when the people slide down the trap door, there were literally only two angles used. END SPOILERSThere was no variety in many of the shots. Often the songs were sung with the character just plainly staring, no movement, no energy. I don't want dance numbers, but going the other direction isn't an excuse for boring shots.
Then again, my two friends loved it. I'm not sure I can be trusted on this one.
Opening Credits:
http://www.broadwayworld.com/videoplay.cfm?colid=23667
I don't know about anyone else, but I really, really loved this. And I actually think it's Burton's most gorgeous movie in I don't know how long. I couldn't get over how great it looked. I haven't seen the original play, so I don't know what I'm missing, but as a simple story of revenge and madness, I thought this was pretty stellar.
Despite being on the ball for most of the year I'm now falling behind in seeing my new releases. I'm going to blow all those fuckers off and see this one over the weekend because Ghostboy's got me excited.
me too. christmas day it is.
I think I'll see it again on Christmas day, too. I can't think of a better movie to celebrate the holiday.
My longer review can be read here. (http://www.road-dog-productions.com/cgi-bin/2007/12/sweeney_todd_1.html)
saw this today. short review (cause its that or nothing these days): i liked it. EASILY EASILY EASILY burton's best since Sleepy Hollow which is 8 years or so. it took me a LONG time to accept the entire film being sung. for anyone else that doesn't know the play, (i didn't), its more of an opera than a musical. and as such, i'm not sure that film is the proper medium to perform it because it just seems SO awkward for the LONGEST time. BUT if you CAN look past that, there is lots of good stuff here. the ending rules. i'm glad to see burton doing something different and the story seems completely made for him, but should this have been a movie in the first place?
yeah (to mod/gamb). this is wonderful and charming and gripping but not particularly cinematic. if i had to describe this in one word it would be goregeous. all the costumes, sets, and filth in general are beautiful.
the leads are great. bonham carter was especially awesome i felt. depp was the usual awesome. as was rickman. i LOVED cohen. SPOILER i was really sad to see him go so early. i'm addicted to his only song. END SPOILER i'm not sure if i liked spall. his relative cookiness was out of wack. i did not care for the little boy/assistant. yes, he was an awesome singer, but his mind was elsewhere in every shot.
of course the lyrics/writing are beyond clever. i just didn't enjoy this as a film as much as i did as a musical if that makes sense. burton didn't take enough advantage of the fact it was a movie. it is the filmed version of probably the best production possible of the musical. it's cinematically somewhat unsatisfying but musically masterful. i enjoyed the heck out of it and i would be surprised if it wasn't in my top ten this year despite this general/odd complaint.
Quote from: picolas on December 29, 2007, 03:24:51 AM
i enjoyed the heck out of it and i would be surprised if it wasn't in my top ten this year despite this general/odd complaint.
YES, exactly. i'm not sure if my review came off too negative. it will likely end up in my Top 10.
I'm indifferent to this movie. Stylistically/cinematically this wasn't particularly new or involving but the style should have elevated the story, which, from what I could tell, relies heavily on how its told rather than the story's own strength. Depp and Bonhan-Carter were good, as was Rickman. There's nothing egregiously dislikeable about the film, but it wasn't as captivating as it could have been.
Thank goodness. I was worried I was the only person out there with a slightly negative opinion. Although, it should be noted, my opinion is negative, as I would not have this make my top ten in any case.
it should also be noted, that, you use, too many commas.
I guess. One over the legal limit, it seems. Let's just chock it up to: drunk.
Quote from: picolas on December 29, 2007, 03:24:51 AM
i did not care for the little boy/assistant. yes, he was an awesome singer, but his mind was elsewhere in every shot.
that's a good way of putting it. he seemed to be distracted by trying to act in every one of his scenes. it was annoying. i also didn't like the emo kid.
BURTON & DEPP: PARTNERS IN CRIME
Deadly duo Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are really out there (singing!) for 'Sweeney Todd.'
By Mark Salisbury, Los Angeles Times
PERCHED together on a couch in a London hotel room, both suffering from the flu, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp make for a brilliant comic double act, sharing jokes, finishing one another's thoughts, laughing like naughty schoolboys, goading each other into mischief. Theirs is a special relationship that extends far beyond professional respect and into the deeply personal. "He's blood," says Depp, who is godfather to Burton's 4-year-old son, Billy. "He's family."
Ever since their first collaboration -- on Burton's 1990 magical fairy tale "Edward Scissorhands" -- both director and actor have pushed each other to some of the best work of their respective careers, with Depp not just Burton's on-screen alter ego but a master in his own right at interpreting the latter's range of outsiders, oddballs and misfits -- be it razor-fingered Edward Scissorhands, cross-dressing film director Ed Wood or creepy confectionary king Willy Wonka.
"Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" marks the pair's sixth collaboration, a melodramatic and gruesome adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's bloody Broadway musical revolving around the exploits of a 19th century London barber out for vengeance against the nefarious judge who arranged for his deportation on a trumped-up charge so he could steal the man's wife and daughter.
Burton had originally seen Sondheim's Tony Award-winning musical as a CalArts student on a trip to London in the early '80s, and had twice flirted with directing a film version, once after "Batman," and again, almost a decade ago, before becoming sidetracked by other projects. The delay, he now reflects, helped serve both him and the film, which he terms "a silent movie with music" -- not least in the casting.
"When I was involved with it a long time ago, I don't even know if I knew who Johnny Depp was," Burton says. "Now it seemed more of the right time. Ten years of life experience made me able to look at this character in a way that I probably wouldn't have looked at it 10 years ago, a certain brooding darkness that creeps in as you get older."
That brooding darkness imbues every frame of the film, a Grand Guignol-influenced slasher movie anchored by Depp's performance and Helena Bonham Carter as Sweeney's ever-resourceful accomplice Mrs. Lovett, who uses the massive grinder in her bake house to turn Sweeney's victims into the filling for her meat pies.
In transferring Sondheim's theatrical show to the screen, Burton shaved an hour's running time, cutting some songs entirely, abridging others, telling the story almost entirely in song and yet determined to strip away anything remotely "Broadway," with only one cast member, Laura Michelle Kelly who plays the beggar woman, a professional singer.
Depp's musical pedigree was limited at best, having played bass and sung background vocals for Florida-based band the Kids back in the '80s, and his only previous on-screen musical was John Waters' "Cry-Baby," a film in which his singing voice had been dubbed. Was Burton the only director Depp would sing for?
"I don't think I would have attempted this with anyone else," Depp begins. "There was fear -- "
"What if Barry Manilow asked you?" Burton suddenly interrupts.
"That's a different thing," Depp retorts, completely deadpan, "cause that might mean duet, and if that's the case, I'm in."
A car horn sounds in the street outside. "And there he is," says Depp, not missing a beat.
The pair start giggling afresh and it's a while before Depp continues.
"There was definite trepidation," he says, finally. "I didn't know if it was possible. I knew I wouldn't be tone deaf but I wasn't sure I could carry a song, let alone several, and something as complex as Stephen Sondheim's. It was real scary for both of us. And talk about the opportunity to really flop. It was one of those, 'Let's turn the heat up a little.' "
While Depp toiled away on the third "Pirates" movie in the Bahamas, he began learning "Sweeney's" numbers, later heading into a small L.A. recording studio owned by his friend Bruce Witkin to lay down some demos, none of which even Burton heard until the movie had been greenlighted and sets were being constructed at Pinewood Studios in England.
Although Sondheim, contractually, had casting approval over the roles of Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett, he said yes to Depp without even hearing him sing. "I was shocked," says Burton. "I don't know the guy very well but he doesn't shy away from his opinion. I think he did have that instinct and belief that Johnny's a good actor and could pull it off. He was a bit harder on everybody else."
Later, when Sondheim's musical director wanted to hear Depp sing, Burton played the role of protector. "There was a bit of a push for 'I've got to see Johnny, I've got to see what his range is . . . ' " Burton recalls. "That wasn't going to happen."
"I was so in fear when I had my meeting with Sondheim," says Depp, as he fetches Burton a Kleenex to rescue him from a messy, flu-related incident, "thinking he was going to hook me, 'All right, come over here kid, come over to the piano and belt one out for me.' "
Even compared to all the other weird and wonderful characters Depp has played for Burton over the years, Sweeney stands out as an intense, brooding, inward-looking fellow, a haunted soul fueled by an unwavering desire for revenge.
"He's a tragic character," Burton says. "I don't think we ever saw him as a villain or even really insane. He's just single-minded and tunnel-visioned."
And, let's not forgot, a serial killer. Yet Depp manages to find compassion and humanity within his emotionally traumatized shell to make you not just empathize but actually care for him, even as he's slicing the throat of yet another victim.
In creating their Sweeney, Burton and Depp paid deliberate homage, both visually and stylistically, to those horror movie stars they'd idolized growing up, actors such as Peter Lorre -- whose 1935 film "Mad Love" is a particular favorite of both men -- Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney, performers whose minimal but expressive acting style they'd always connected with.
"It's almost a lost art," says Depp. "[John] Barrymore was a master, but the king for me was Lon Chaney. You go back and watch films like 'The Penalty' and see this rage and sadness, this huge range of emotions, without the luxury of dialogue."
Every day on set, says Burton, they would cut Sweeney's lines down to the bare minimum. "Johnny can, just by looking and not saying anything, project pain and sadness and anger and longing," he says. "That's what all those actors could do without a word and that was the exciting thing about this. The story's told through the eyes and the singing."
And, once again, Depp found himself playing a character, as he did previously with Scissorhands and Wood, that Burton connected with emotionally and psychologically. "There were moments," Depp recalls, "when Tim said, 'You know, I think this is my favorite character.' "
"I just relate to the guy," Burton explains. "Not speaking, staring out the window, brooding, no small talk, but your mind's swirling around . . . and it's a visual representation of that. I said to Johnny, if I was an actor, I swear to God, this would be the role I would love to play because you don't have to talk, you just stand there, staring out the window. Perfect. The singing's another issue. . . . "
This felt like Burton was coasting on auto-pilot. I enjoyed it, and I especially enjoyed Sasha Baron-Cohen... but visually, nothing really excited me except for, maybe, the sunny beach/ocean/fantasy bit in the middle. But it was pretty much a cinematic safety net, the same way Darjeeling Limited was for Anderson.
A huge improvement from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but not much else. It reminded me that I do like Burton. I'm enthusiastic about more of his films than not (Pee Wee, Ed Wood, Batman, even Sleepy Hollow) and also reminded me why I haven't been enthusiastic about a Burton film since, well... goddamn, I guess it's been almost a decade.
Peter Travers is fucking nuts if he thinks Depp's performance edges out Day-Lewis' performance in any way, though.
As much as I admired the care that went into making this movie, and as much as I enjoyed parts of it, this obviously wasn't meant to be liked by me. My beef with the whole thing is the music itself, which I found boring and repetitive for the most part. Depp is ok, but is Bonham Carter the one that's particularly good here. Baron Cohen is the funniest.
It felt longer than it should be, and cutting some more of the musical numbers from the original stage version would have benefited the film in my opinion.