Sweeney Todd Trailer!

[SarahOnBway]

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809834155/video/4367764

Let's discuss...

 

[Winslow Leach]

Wow, this looks really cool! Been waiting for the trailer, thanks for the link! I only hope the MPAA doesn't tamper with it, and force Burton to make any unnecessary...cuts! Sondheim's work must remain intact!

 

[janicegroupie]

I actually know nothing about Sweeny Todd besides what I could gather from the preview, any info would be cool, but I always love when Tim Burton and Johnny Depp work together so I'm excited. Plus it has Alan Rickman who I haven't seen in much but love him as Snape. And Helena Boham Carter who is such a talented actress. Yes, this should be quite cool

 

[Beakerfan]

Oh my gosh! That looks awesome! Can't wait to see it!

 

[Winslow Leach]

I actually know nothing about Sweeny Todd besides what I could gather from the preview, any info would be cool, but I always love when Tim Burton and Johnny Depp work together so I'm excited. Plus it has Alan Rickman who I haven't seen in much but love him as Snape. And Helena Boham Carter who is such a talented actress. Yes, this should be quite cool

Sweeney Todd originally appeared in a 19th-century "penny dreadful" called The String of Pearls, attributed to one Thomas Prest. A penny dreadful was a 19th-century British publication that cost a penny, and usually contained cheap, lurid, sensational stories that were published in serial form on cheap paper.

The original Sweeney Todd was more or less a one dimensional villain. He was simply a psychotic barber, who enjoyed murdering people and baking them into meat pies, with the help of an assistant, who had various names in several copycat stories, but who is best known today as Mrs. Lovett.

In the 19th century, the story was dramatized on stage as Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Again, this Victorian melodrama gave Todd no motive for his acts. He was simply evil incarnate. Other plays based on the story were written throughout the 19th and early 20th century.

In 1936, a British film was released, called Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, based primarily on the first dramatized version. The film starred an actor with the stage name Tod Slaughter, who was a stage actor/manager in the early part of the 20th century before turning to film. He wasn't really well known in the U.S., but in the 1930s and 1940s, Slaughter was the British equivelant of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, in that he had a corner on the horror movie market, with his series of lurid, macabre horror films.

In 1973, playwright Christopher Bond wrote Sweeney Todd, which was later the basis for the musical and upcoming Burton movie. Bond gave Todd a background, and made him somewhat sympathetic for the first time. In the Bond play, Todd is a man who is wrongfully imprisoned, and years later returns home to find his wife and child murdered by the evil judge who set him up. Todd resumes his career as a barber, slashing the throats of customers, and with the assistance of Mrs. Lovett, bakes them into pies.

Stephen Sondheim's musical, with book by Hugh Wheeler (who adapted Bond's play) opened on Broadway in 1979.

It's still debatable whether Sweeney Todd actually existed. Most sources say he was completely fictional. Extensive research finds no evidence that such a man ever lived, that he was a purely fictional creation, with Prest basing his story on earlier material, such as Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus.

 

[Winslow Leach]

There's going to be a nifty coffee table book published in conjunction with the movie. I assume it will contain Burton's sketches among other things. It's scheduled for release December 4.

 

[Beakerfan]

I'll have to get that for my sis! She's obsessed with Johnny Depp (and Tim Burton).

 

[Beauregard]

It's hard to be obsessed with one, without the other. Where there is Tim Burton, there lurks a Johnny Depp and a Boham Carter in his wake.

 

[jacobsnchz]

I never liked anything that had to do with Sweeney Todd. That's probably the only musical I hate. lol. Hard to believe. lol.

 

[Beakerfan]

It's hard to be obsessed with one, without the other. Where there is Tim Burton, there lurks a Johnny Depp and a Boham Carter in his wake.

Soooo true!