Burton Asked To Cut “Sweeney Todd”
Warner Brothers has asked Tim Burton to cut parts of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Studio execs have become squeamish over some of the extremely bloody early footage from the Burton/Johnny Depp collaboration. The film currently merits an R-rating, and the studio wants it re-cut, so that it can be released with a PG-13 rating.
In the film/play, Todd’s victims are sat in a mechanical chair, where they are subject to a slice across their throats, before a trap door in the floor opens and they slide down a chute into the lair of Todd’s mistress, Mrs Lovett (played by Helena Bonham Carter), who uses the dead bodies to make her meat pies. One scene that is said to have particularly bothered the studio bosses involved a “ten-year-old boy cutting up body parts, which were then thrown into a meat grinder and turned into mince.”
This is nothing short of absurd! I realize that the idea is to make the film accessible to as many people as possible, but come on! You’ve made a movie about a man who takes absolute delight in murdering people by slitting their throats and having his girlfriend make them into meat pies-and you want it to be less bloody?!
Leave Tim Burton alone. The man has proven time and again that he knows what he’s doing.
Johnny Depp, Depp, Tim Burton, Sweeney Todd, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
August 28th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
I totally hope they don’t make this PG-13. The whole concept behind this film is worth an R rating - so they can’t cut parts of this graphic story. Ahh…Hollywood…
Stacy
http://www.about-atlantaga.com
August 28th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
So okay. Let it be gory if they want to call it gory but that’s the story!
August 28th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Why does Hollywood persist in ruining things before we even have the chance to see them in their original perfection? *sigh*
August 29th, 2007 at 6:05 am
Thanks for stopping by, Stacy, atomicgirl, and Jennifer! We seem to be pretty much all of one mind about this. They should leave this movie alone!
August 29th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Right you are Gayle. If they think it’s too gory, then just put in an R rating or something. Then let the people just watch the movie in its purest form. People surely have a right to choose and “cleaning up” a movie like this one would only lead to a mediocre piece of work. Now that surely would not make Tim Burton and Johnny quite happy.