Alan Rickman Cast as Judge Turpin in Sweeney Todd Film

By: Dec. 10, 2006
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Stage and screen star Alan Rickman will play the villainous Judge Turpin in the upcoming DreamWorks film version of Sweeney Todd.

He joins the previously announced Johnny Depp in the title role, Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett and Sacha Baron-Cohen as Pirelli.

Rickman, who is known to audiences worldwide for his work as Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films, is a London theatre veteran twice Tony-nominated for his Broadway work in Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Private Lives.  His other film credits include The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Love Actually, Dogma, Michael Collins, Sense and Sensibility, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and Die Hard.

The film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, directed by Tim Burton, will begin filming in February of 2007.

Sweeney Todd, which will be a co-production with Warner Bros., marks the 6th collaboration between the Depp and Burton. 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 (The Aviator, Gladiator).  A late 2007 release is planned. 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) recently played the Eugene O'Neill Theatre; Michael Cerveris and Patti LuPone starred. 

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."


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