Attend the Tale: 'Sweeney Todd' Exclusive with Producers & Screenwriter

On a cold, drizzly day (somewhat suitable, one might say) at the Claridge's Hotel, there was a feeling of excitement in the air that you could cut with a knife as the cast and creative team of the highly-anticipated new movie-musical Sweeney Todd crowded a press junket in London.

In a very special BroadwayWorld exclusive, London reporter Nick Hutson provides a very special Q/A series with the likes of Johnny Depp, renown composer Stephen Sondheim; plus stars  Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter, and director Tim Burton and the stars of tomorrow Ed Sanders, Jayne Weisner and Jamie Campbell Bower. 

Stay Tuned as BroadwayWorld brings you even more exclusive content and features on Sweeney Todd! In theatres for limited national release December 21, 2007 and wide January 11, 2008.

WALTER PARKES, LAURIE MacDONALD 

(PRODUCERS) AND

JOHN LOGAN (SCREENWRITER)

The brains behind the film are the producers.  We asked about their involvement and their history within the film.

Walter Parkes: Laurie and I met with Steve Sondheim in 2002 originally.  And had conversations at the time we were also running the studio (DreamWorks).  For whatever reason Steve felt comfortable that we would, you know, love the baby like our own and do whatever we could to make sure that it came to the screen the right way.  John, Laurie and I have collaborated many many times since but we really got to know each other and cut our teeth together on Gladiator.  John, I feel, really wrote the draft that kind of became Gladiator and got the movie made, and had been a man of the theatre and a lover of this play and quite extraordinarily I think came to us.

John Logan: I think, on bended-knee, I said if I don't write this I'll die.

Laurie MacDonald: It was actually in fact Gladiator, which we all collaborated on, which made us feel that we have the right to take a shot at such unusual and potentially difficult material.

Walter Parkes: Speaking for me and Laurie, we had run the studio for several years and it was a very good run and there's a connection that people have to Sweeney Todd that really does border on the fanatic.  People who love the play love the play in a very deep way.  The three of us share a lot of things and that was one of the things I think we all shared, but it isn't an obviously commercial venture, I mean it's a very risky thing to do.  So, really, for us as producers it kind of took the confidence that we'd derived from a couple years there working and working together on Gladiator and seeing how well that worked and saying you know something, we can try this – we can try to do this the right way.

John Logan: Right, and also everyone at the early stages in this, Walter and I, we all saw the original 1979 Broadway production of this and it has stayed with us since then and we have such affection for it and respect for the work of Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler and Chris Bond and Hal Prince and the people that made that original Broadway production.  That was paramount to me all the way though.  From the very beginning we were all talking about the same beast and talking about it with respect.

Walter Parkes: Absolutely.  I remember (to Logan) you started your whole process with an almost like academic analysis and study and breakdown of the original play.  I think you became a scholar of the original…

John Logan: Oh, those many years ago…

Walter Parkes: No, because there's such extraordinary invisible work John had to do because no one wanted to re-invent the Wheeler, at least on a screen-play level... We wanted to honor, as John said, this amazing piece of work that has only grown in stature since its inception and, you know, I think it's always thought to be the most important score of the second part of the 20th century, and it's such a great story. That was a very long process and there was quite a long process of trying to find different ways of getting the movie made and eventually we parted ways with Sam (Mendes) and at that point I remember a conversation the three of us had and it really was: "Well there are all these versions of Sweeney Todd that are going to be hopefully respectable and we'll go out there and put on film this wonderful piece of work and we'll find its little audience and then there's this other version and that would be a version with Tim and Johnny."  It's like, suddenly, oh my Lord it could have a larger cultural impact possibly just because of what they bring to it, and also the fact there's a kind of perfect correspondence between Tim's sensibility and what the sensibility of the play itself is so we were lucky enough to engage in conversations with the various representatives and, yes, Tim came in.  Quite honestly Tim is such a total auteur that when you make a movie with Tim, you hand the baton to Tim.

John Logan: From the very beginning the first discussion we had with Tim Burton we talked about the blood and one of the unforgettable things in the stage show there was the first stage slitting – you remember this – the blood arching across the stage, the light hitting it.  We talked about the blood from the very beginning and said it would be dishonest, immoral and unethical to treat this as anything other than murder and to try and shy away from the blood.

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DreamWorks Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures Presents a Parkes/MacDonald and Zanuck Company Production, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, directed by Tim Burton. Produced by Richard D. Zanuck, Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald and John Logan; Executive Producer Patrick McCormick.

Based on the Broadway musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler; originally staged by Harold Prince. From an adaptation by Christopher Bond, screenplay by John Logan. Johnny Depp and Tim Burton join forces again in a big-screen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's award-winning musical thriller Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street…

"Depp stars in the title role as a man unjustly sent to prison who vows revenge, not only for that cruel punishment, but for the devastating consequences of what happened to his wife and daughter. When he returns to reopen his barber shop, Sweeney Todd becomes the Demon Barber of Fleet Street who 'shaved the faces of gentlemen who never thereafter were heard of again,'" state press notes. "Joining Depp is Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney's amorous accomplice, who creates diabolical meat pies. The cast also includes Alan Rickman, who portrays the evil Judge Turpin, who sends Sweeney to prison, Timothy Spall as the Judge's wicked associate Beadle Bamford and Sacha Baron Cohen as a rival barber, the flamboyant Signor Adolfo Pirelli."

For limited national release December 21, 2007 and wide January 11, 2008.

Photos top-bottom: Laurie MacDonald and Walter Parkes (by Francois Duhamel, 2005 Paramount Pictures); John Logan and Walter Parkes (by WireImage.com)