Today in London...SWEENEY TODD begins principal photography! — Page 3

Gelfing, if SWEENEY TODD is pulling a DREAMGIRLS, then DREAMGIRLS pulled a CHICAGO and CHICAGO pulled a MOULIN ROUGE!

CHICAGO: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Rene Zellweger, Richard Gere, John Reilly, Queen Latifah

MOULIN ROUGE: Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, John Leguizamo

THE PRODUCERS: Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Uma Thurman, Will Ferrell

and don't get me started on HAIRSPRAY...

Casting big names in musicals is just how it works. How else will you get a non-musical audience to come see the movie? The only two recent movie musicals not to do so was RENT and PHANTOM...though RENT did have Taye Diggs and Jesse L. Martin and PHANTOM did have Gerald Butler and Patrick Wilson and Mimi Driver.

For the record: I think the names Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are enough to bring in the bucks. Warner Bros shouldn't worry about it. Not to mention for extra security you have Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Alan Rickman!!

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Updated On: 2/6/07 at 10:13 AM

Frankly - they should have done MORE star casting.

Johnny Depp is absolutely NOT a guaranteed draw. Just last year his movie THE LIBERTINE (a dark movie somewhat along the twisted lines of SWEENEY) brought in a whopping 4 million dollars at the box office - and it argueably had more recognizable names in the ensemble cast than SWEENEY. Burton has his fans, but frankly, his past movies have mostly been filled to the brim with starry ensembles (BIG FISH) or based on extremely famous properties (CHARLIE...CHOCOLATE, APES).

Subject matter dictates everything. Cast dictates everything else.

To make a movie musical of SWEENEY TOOD with a cast most people - including people on this board - have NEVER heard of is very, very, very risky - in my opinion.

Most movies that are either really big budget (SUPERMAN) or are really reliant on Oscar nominations to make money (DREAMGIRLS) do big "announcement" ads when shooting begins. I heard somebody say once -- the bigger the ad, the more scared the studio is!

Interesting topics on the IMDB message board for this movie - including a few links about Depp singing.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0408236/board/threads

Someone posted a scan on imdb.com

Just FYI There is something funky with that scan. The blood isn't pink in the actual ad.

Its Klingon blood.

Sry, flashback from my Star trek days.

But if I'm picturing it right (trying to distill the correct colors), looks pretty cool.

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Here, I got this from Variety.com

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Thesbijean, re-read what I said. I didn't say those names were used to promote the film (even though to a degree they were), I said they were known names in the films.

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How sadly generic and remarkably similar to the last one.

I really like the logo!

"Johnny Depp is absolutely NOT a guaranteed draw. Just last year his movie THE LIBERTINE (a dark movie somewhat along the twisted lines of SWEENEY) brought in a whopping 4 million dollars at the box office"

I think that's a little unfair--I mean, the movie was virtually unpublicized and dumped in a handful of theaters. Also, it was unbelievably awful (I saw it on DVD).

If it is being marketed as Oscar-bait, I just hope the studios aren't as aggressive as they were with Dreamgirls. I think Dreamgirls' marketing was a turn-off to voters. Oscar-bait or not, I'm definitely looking forward to this film.

That's a pretty nice looking logo.