Tim Burton forced to butcher his Sweeney Todd cut?

By Matt Holmes / June 25, 2011

Warner Brothers are beginning to panic over the current cut of Tim Burton's upcoming Sweeney Todd movie and according to reports in the Daily Mail, they have asked the director to cut back on the blood and violence in the editing room so the flick can be slapped with a PG-13 rating rather than a Hard-R.

You can see where the studio are coming from I guess. An R-Rated dark/musical? Seems a bit risky to me but then again when they finance Tim Burton to make a movie about a demon barber who cuts victims throats for his wife to put the dismembered bodies into mince pies... what the hell do they expect?

€œTim€™s not happy that the studio is asking for so many cuts to the cutting, as it were,€ someone connected to the film told the Daily Mail. €œThe thing is, the studio really likes the film and they want to make it accessible to as big an audience as possible - which means stemming the blood flow. But that€™s a bit difficult for a story involving a guy who gets high slitting throats.€

I like how The Daily Mail aren't even calling this mystery source an 'insider' and have now just resorted to reporting news from 'someone'. Actually wait a second, that's what I'm doing too isn't it? I know what your thinking... Johnny Depp = equals money, so this movie will be fine. Not exactly. Sure he is popular for his Jack Sparrow movies but outside of that, he's only rather mediocre as a draw. His 2005 movie The Libertine which was fronted by Depp and him alone made $10 million WORLDWIDE. Sure, most of his movies are hits and when he's teamed with Tim Burton then they usually make a ton of movie but this one might be a little different for audiences. Depp remember, is the villain of this piece and although I would pay more money than sense to see this baby tomorrow, an R-Rated musical sounds extremely risky to me... but then again an PG-13 tale of Sweeney Todd just sounds dumb too. source - slash film