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Thursday, August 17, 2006

Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd

DreamWorks Studios announced today that Johnny Depp has been set to star and Tim Burton to direct Sweeney Todd, the award-winning Stephen Sondheim musical thriller.

The co-production with Warner Bros. will star Johnny Depp as the titular Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Depp is currently starring in the record-breaking blockbuster, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

Sweeney Todd marks the 6th collaboration between the actor and director. The previous Burton-Depp films have been Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands and Sleepy Hollow.

Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald will partner with Richard Zanuck and John Logan to produce the screenplay adaptation which was written by Logan. Production is planned to begin early next year for a late 2007 release. Paramount will distribute for DreamWorks domestically and Warner Bros. internationally.

The Broadway production of Sweeney Todd, with Sondheim's music and lyrics and a book by Hugh Wheeler based on the play by Christopher Bond, opened in 1979 and won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical. 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.

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."

From Coming Soon.

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