Warner Brothers are beginning to panic over the current cut of Tim Burton’s upcoming Sweeney Todd movie and according to reports in the Daily Mail, they have asked the director to cut back on the blood and violence in the editing room so the flick can be slapped with a PG-13 rating rather than a Hard-R.
You can see where the studio are coming from I guess. An R-Rated dark/musical? Seems a bit risky to me but then again when they finance Tim Burton to make a movie about a demon barber who cuts victims throats for his wife to put the dismembered bodies into mince pies… what the hell do they expect?
“Tim’s not happy that the studio is asking for so many cuts to the cutting, as it were,” someone connected to the film told the Daily Mail. “The thing is, the studio really likes the film and they want to make it accessible to as big an audience as possible – which means stemming the blood flow. But that’s a bit difficult for a story involving a guy who gets high slitting throats.”
I like how The Daily Mail aren’t even calling this mystery source an ‘insider’ and have now just resorted to reporting news from ’someone’. Actually wait a second, that’s what I’m doing too isn’t it?
I know what your thinking… Johnny Depp = equals money, so this movie will be fine. Not exactly. Sure he is popular for his Jack Sparrow movies but outside of that, he’s only rather mediocre as a draw. His 2005 movie The Libertine which was fronted by Depp and him alone made $10 million WORLDWIDE.
Sure, most of his movies are hits and when he’s teamed with Tim Burton then they usually make a ton of movie but this one might be a little different for audiences. Depp remember, is the villain of this piece and although I would pay more money than sense to see this baby tomorrow, an R-Rated musical sounds extremely risky to me… but then again an PG-13 tale of Sweeney Todd just sounds dumb too.
source – slash film
4 Comments
Yuck, sounds like typically desperate, pious, self-proclaimed-moral-champion dogwash from the Daily Mail. Anyway, my anti-Mail stance aside…
Sweeney Todd is a tale of a murderous mad barber. It’s meant to be gothic, bloody and macabre. Why can’t a musical have an R rating and revel in being a bit horrific? It offers an intriguing change from the usual High School Musical shenanigans and I really hope that Warner Bros. doesn’t brush the artistic integrity of Burton and his collaborators aside here to try and seek box-office success (something which a watered down version could fail to do – no critic or comscious cinemagoer would want to go and see a film with it’s soul sucked out). As for your wondering whether Johnny Depp is a draw on his own Matt, don’t understimate the appeal of Burton. Whatever he does, people will want to watch, and the same is quite true for Depp.
How did Warner Bros not realise that this, may just be, a little gory? I mean when they heard the pitch about a barber who brutally murders his victims before his mistress turns them into pies, did they seriously think “you know what, the kids will LOVE this!”
As usual, its insanity from the bland movie studios who want something with wide cross appeal, thus sanitizing the product so they can twist more green out of paying audiences with “unrated” editions…
Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter) is not Sweeney’s wife.
Yeah mistress. Although I’m certain I saw an adaptation where it was his wife… oh well.