Where to watch Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
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A wronged barber returns to London and reopens his shop, forming a sinister partnership with the tenant below. As he pursues revenge against those who harmed him, the story unfolds through dark humor, tragic relationships, graphic violence, and songs adapted from the acclaimed Broadway musical.
Cast: Helena Bonham Carter, Johnny Depp, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jamie Campbell Bower, Laura Michelle Kelly, Jayne Wisener, Ed Sanders, Ava May, Jody Halse, Aron Paramor
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Trivia & production notes
- Tim Burton first encountered the stage musical in 1980 while a CalArts student in London and attended it three nights in a row because it captivated him so deeply.
- Burton approached Stephen Sondheim about adapting the musical into a film when his directing career began in the late 1980s, but the project never materialized at that time.
- Tim Burton took over directing after Sam Mendes left the project to helm Jarhead, and Burton's own film Ripley's Believe It or Not collapsed due to budget issues.
- Adapting the three-hour stage musical into a two-hour film required removing some songs entirely and shortening others to maintain the pace of an old melodrama.
- Christopher Lee and other actors cast as ghost narrators had their roles completely cut from the final film due to time constraints caused by a break in filming when Johnny Depp's daughter became seriously ill.
- Three cast members, Ed Sanders, Jayne Wisener, and Jamie Campbell Bower, had never appeared in a film before being cast in Sweeney Todd.
- Tim Burton deliberately filmed on physical sets rather than using green screens because he believed having actors perform in front of actual sets helped them get into a musical frame of mind.
- The fake blood used during filming was colored orange so it would render properly on the desaturated film stock, and crew members wore bin liners while shooting scenes to avoid getting stained.
- Burton insisted the film be extremely bloody because he felt stage versions that downplayed the violence lost the story's power and emotional impact.
- The film's $50 million budget was only secured once Warner Bros. Pictures, DreamWorks, and Paramount all committed to the project, reflecting studio nervousness about its macabre tone and hybrid genre.
Adapted from the Wikipedia article Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007 film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.
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