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 recently starred 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, 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," according to press notes. John Doyle's highly acclaimed revival (for which he won a Tony) is currently playing at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre through September 3rd; Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone star. 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. He is helped by Mrs. Lovett, who bakes Sweeney's victims into "the worst pies in London."Videos