SPIELBERG DOES SWEENY TODD?
It’s no secret that ever since CHICAGO hit big, Steven Spielberg has been looking for a musical to do. Rumors have flown about HAIRSPRAY and other projects, but nowaccording to Varietyit seems that Spielberg is sending DreamWorks production chief (and all-around nice guy) Walter Parkes to talk to SWEENEY TODD creator and musical genius Stephen Sondheim about turning TODD into a feature at DreamWorks with Spielberg potentially at the helm.
SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET is a horror-musical about a ‘wronged man’Benjamin Barkerwho returns from a penal colony after being sent there by an evil judge who wanted Barker’s wife. Barker returns to London as a barber and begins savagely killing man after man in his barber’s chair with a straight razor and then having his partner in crime, Mrs. Lovitt (Angela Lansbury, if you can believe it, in the original production), bake the corpses into meat pies due to the depressed times in London. The pie shop becomes a raging success as Barker, a.k.a. Sweeney Todd, gains a reputation as a master barber as well in hopes of luring the judge to his chair so he can kill him, too.
A truly disturbing and insane musical (one of the best ever made), SWEENEY TODD has attracted the interest of many filmmakers over the years, including Tim Burton soon after NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS. Most recently, FANGORIA broke that Hugh Jackman was most interested in doing SWEENEY if and when it ever came to the big screen. No word on whether or not Sondheimwho hasn’t given out the rights to his stuff yet, reallywill play cards with DreamWorks, but here’s hoping.
Courtesy of Fangoria
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