Screen Rant » sweeney todd

Sweeney Todd: An R-Rated, Throat-Slashing… Musical?

Vic Holtreman — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:31:32 +0000

So… does anyone besides me think that Sweeney Todd doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of making any money at the box office?

Granted, Tim Burton was probably the perfect choice for the movie version of the stage play, and Johnny Depp looks like he’ll do a great job in the role of the throat-slitting barber, but I’m wondering whether people will show up to see this after opening weekend. I’m not saying it won’t be good, just that I don’t know how it will go over with the average moviegoer.

While musicals are extremely popular in live theater even with seemingly incongruous material like a murdering barber (or a man-eating plant), when it comes to translating that to the big screen, they really don’t do that well.

It’s always tricky marketing a movie musical and quite often studios screw it up. They realize that musicals don’t attract a huge audience, so sometimes they try downplay that aspect of the film when in fact it’s a major part of it. Audiences show up expecting one thing and are given something completely different. I think this is happening with Sweeney Todd: While the first trailer did hint at the musical nature of the film:

the second trailer that came out a couple of days ago is darker, more graphic and without a hint of any song and dance numbers:

Also, it’s (appropriately) rated R, so that will keep out most of the teenybopper girls who put Pirates of the Caribbean through the roof money-wise due to Johnny Depp’s (ok, ok… and Orlando Bloom’s) presence.

I think this may do well opening weekend but I don’t think it’ll have “legs.” It’s a weird combination and I’m thinking that people won’t go for it or recommend it. I could be wrong of course and it could always end up catching on. This is a tricky one and I’m curious to see how it plays out.

Sweeney Todd opens on December 21st.

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Beowulf and Sweeney Todd Ratings: A PG-13 And An R

Vic Holtreman — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 15:11:45 +0000

I guess CGI motion-capture nudity doesn’t count as much as live action, fleshy nudity: Beowulf has been given a PG-13 rating by the MPAA. On the other hand (and thankfully) the Johnny Depp starring film version of Sweeney Todd will be rated R. I’d say that’s appropriate for a movie about a throat-slitting barber that grinds his victims into meat pies.

Here are the detailed descriptions from the MPAA for the ratings:

Beowulf: Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence including disturbing images, some sexual material and nudity.

Sweeney Todd: Rated R for graphic bloody violence.

So there you have it. Now let’s wait and see if the upcoming movie Hitman actually ends up with the R-rating that Fox says it’s shooting for or whether they’ll strip it down to a PG-13.

Thanks to Firstshowing for the heads up!

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Movie News Grab Bag

Vic Holtreman — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:46:12 +0000

A guy just can’t take a vacation around here… leave for a few days and ya miss a boatload of movie news. So here’s a quick summary of a few items worth noting:

- Yahoo! Movies has a trailer up for Slipstream, a time travel movie directed by and starring Anthony Hopkins. It looks interesting but I’ll be damned if I can tell what the story is from the trailer. Maybe that’s the point…

- It seems that Brett Ratner will be directing the remake of Escape from New York. Uh oh.

- Vin Diesel as the Terminator directed by McG? I suppose that half of that is good news… And sorry, I just wasn’t in the mood to do one of those half Terminator/half Vin Diesel photoshop jobs that everyone else has attached to this story.

- The Heartbreak Kid is getting killed at the box office and by critics. It got it’s butt kicked by Disney’s The Game which is in it’s second week. As of right now it’s scoring about 30% positive over at Rotten Tomatoes. It’s from the same guys who brought us There’s Something About Mary, and no, the critics aren’t being high-brow on this: The latter scores 80% over at RT.

- The trailer for Sweeny Todd starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter is out. Call me a killjoy but I predict box office doom for this one, even if it turns out to be interesting. There was one brief scene in the trailer that indicated to me this might turn out to be a musical, which is the kiss of death for a modern movie. Audiences just don’t buy the concept any more.

- George Lucas says that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (yeesh, I had to look that title up because I can’t even remember it) will be as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark. Hey George, I think we’ll be the judge (cough, Phantom Menace, cough) of that.

- Pixar doing a CGI version of John Carter of Mars? Where do I sign up?

- The Thor movie as it is currently written would cost $300 million, and Marvel wants director Matthew Vaughn to trim half of that from the budget. Hmm… maybe they can just reuse styrofoam cups for coffee instead of getting a new cup every time? That should do it.

- Serenity 2? I doubt it, although I absolutely loved Serenity.

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Studio Wants Throat Slitting Sweeney Todd Rated PG-13?

Vic Holtreman — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 15:45:22 +0000

How ridiculous is this?

Warner Bros. Studio hires Tim Burton (a director known for the creepy tone he brings to even fairy tale stories) to direct a movie based on the stage play Sweeney Todd, which is about a barber who slits the throats of his customers so that his mistress can grind them up into meat pies. Burton makes the movie, assuming obviously with that for a story that the movie will be rated R.

Now the word it that the studio has come back and wants the movie trimmed for a PG-13 rating.

Predictably, Tim Burton is not happy about this.

If you to shelled out the money to produce a movie as described above, wouldn’t you assume that based on the story and the director (who I think is a great choice for this film) that the final result would not be a PG-13 movie? Would you even want this movie to be PG-13?

It’s a gruesome story and should be portrayed so on the screen. One of the major hallmarks of a PG-13 movie is the lack of blood in scenes where there should be plenty (the major offender in this category are gunfights where hundreds of shots are fired, people drop like flies and there’s not a drop of blood to be seen).

How they expect one of the bloodiest ways to kill someone (throat slitting) followed by grinding body parts into meat pies to be “cleansed” to a PG-13 rating is beyond me. Plus, this may be off topic, but considering how civilians have been murdered by masked terrorists using a similar method in Iraq, the last thing I want to see is the gruesome aspect of this type of death made less shocking in a film.

Source: /Film

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