The Hollywood Reporter: Risky Business

A 'Sweeney' soiree for Burton

By Borys Kit

DreamWorks/Paramount and Warner Bros. International threw the first awards-related event of 2008 on Friday night with a cocktail reception for Tim Burton in honor of his contender "Sweeney Todd."

Despite the very heavy rain, quite a few people turned out for the event, held at the S Bar near Hollywood and Vine, for a chance to say a few words to Burton. Burton actually showed up a bit late, because of the weather, and looked quite relaxed for a guy who has been constantly go-go-go. He finished the movie in the nick of time, did press for it in North America, then went back to London to be with his wife, Helena Bonham Carter, for the birth of their child. At 10 o'clock Friday night he was going to a Q&A at the Arclight that was put together just three days before (and sold out in 24 hours), then was immediately going to Japan to promote the movie there.

Burton said that because he's been so busy he hadn't had time to catch the season's other movies like "There Will Be Blood" and had no intention of seeing them in screener form. It's theatrical or bust for the man.

Speaking of Japan, the country is a neat case for the movie, which with its many angles has presented many marketing challenges for DreamWorks and Warners. In Japan, audiences actually love musicals unabashedly, so there is no need to hide the musical elements of the film in trailers and TV spots, like Paramount did here. So Warners, which is handling international distribution, is playing up that part of it. Still, there are no guarantees.

When told that the night's event kicked off the year in terms of awards events, Burton jovially exclaimed, "Excellent! I like kicking things off. Get me a champagne bottle, and I'll smash it against the wall!"

(Getty Images photo)

Attend the tale...

An interesting bit of culture clash appears to be brewing on the horizon as the film-geeky Comic-Con approaches. The San Diego genre-minded convention kicks off July 26, and the studios and TV networks are already polishing their presentations. The preliminary line-up of films to be featured has just been released, and the line-up at the moment includes:

Alien vs. Predator 2: No Peace On Earth, American Gangster, Babylon AD, Balls of Fury, Beowulf, The Bourne Ultimatum, Coraline, Fred Claus, Get Smart, The Golden Compass, Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, I Am Legend, The Incredible Hulk, Indiana Jones 4, Invasion, Iron Man, National Treasure 2, Resident Evil: Extinction, Speed Racer, The Strangers, Stardust, Star Trek XI, Sunshine, Sweeney Todd, 30 Days of Night, Trick 'r Treat, Wanted, Where The Wild Things Are, White Out

Now, a lot of the titles are sure to find favor with the assembled fans -- "Hell Boy 2," "Speed Racer," "Star Trek XI," for example. But lurking way down on the list is one semi-unpredictable entry: The movie version of the Stephen Sondheim musical "Sweeney Todd." Sure, the movie's being directed by Tim Burton and stars Johnny Depp as the demon barber of Fleet Street. Still, Sondheim has always been something of an acquired taste -- one of the geniuses of the musical theater, whose talents aren't always recognized by the humable fans of "Cats" and "Mamma Mia!". Not to mention, the folks who can't stand musicals of any stripe or seriousness. So it will be fascinating to see what sort of pitch Paramount Pictures/DreamWorks offers to cajole the fan boys into the "Sweeney" tent. (Gregg Kilday)

Behind Carrey's CAA Defection

The NYT's Sharon Waxman gets behind the scenes on troubled comedy star Jim Carrey's breakup with his longtime UTA agent Nick Stevens (reported on 9/13 by TMZ and Deadline Hollywood), followed by Carrey's signing with CAA last week (reported by THR). The minutiae of who did what to whom is wearying; the question is what does it really mean? The first star to command $20 million (for 1996's Cable Guy), Carrey is now facing the music as studios are asking how much they're really willing to bank on him. At long last the industry is retrenching from the disastrous inflation that Cable Guy caused among the top-ranked movie stars who demanded that they should get what Carrey was getting—and then some. Cheap comedies weren't so cheap when major comedy stars were attached to them. And so on.

Risky Biz Briefs

• Collect those coins to cough up for downloadable movies on iTunes and Amazon. More tk 9/12.
• Sodom is for lovers: Michael Moore confronts anti-gay church with a busload full of gay guys.
• Child soldiers are scary: Magnolia Pictures' Jesus Camp trailer is getting passed around more than a mattress on the 405. It's the latest doc from Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, the filmmakers behind Baltimore heartbreaker The Boys of Baraka.
• Cartoonbrew teases The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D.
• Fametracker managed to score an exclusive interview with Nicolas Cage's Hair. When Cage walked onstage to promote Ghost Rider at Comic-Con in July, his coif caused quite a stir in the press section.
• Feng Xiaogang's The Banquet runs out of dim sum in Venice. Second seating scheduled for Toronto.
  
• The animal kingdom crowns a Great Barrier Reef sting ray its new head of state. No surprise to Trey Parker and Matt Stone who called it ages ago on South Park.
• THR reviews The Black Book | The Fountain | The Last King of Scotland | Bobby | A Few Days of September | and many more.

-- posted by Sheigh

Burton Signs Depp for Sweeney Todd for February Start

[posted by Sheigh]

"Sweeney Todd" is scheduled to go before cameras at Pinewood Studios in London on February 5. Director Tim Burton has landed his favorite leading man, Johnny Depp, to star as the Demon Barber of Fleet Street in the movie version of the award-winning Stephen Sondheim musical thriller. Full story.

TBD is who will play Mrs. Lovett and bake all those unsavory meat pies. Helena Bonham Carter, you say? Who is the perfect young Angela Lansbury? Or a leading lady with pipes and a little more boxoffice lustre than Patti LuPone or Christine Baranski? Take our poll:

Who should play Sweeney Todd's Mrs. Lovett?
	Meryl Streep
	Catherine Zeta Jones
	Helena Bonham Carter
	Patti Lupone
	Christine Baranski
	Bernadette Peters
	Idina Menzel
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Jim Carrey and Tim Burton Change Gears

Slate's Kim Masters dissects why Tim Burton's Believe It Or Not, starring Jim Carrey, fell apart. Here's the story in THR. The bottom line is that these days the studios want to bank their millions on certified tentpoles with sequel potential—like Spider-Man and Superman—and are skittish about banking the farm on Part One. It takes guts.

3-D 'Nightmare' This Halloween

Walt Disney Pictures will release a digital 3-D version of "Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas" in time for Halloween.

"When visitors came to visit the set of 'Nightmare Before Christmas,' they were always amazed by the intricate sets and beautiful puppets -- that they actually existed in miniature," director Henry Selick said Monday. "It was disappointing to see this effect lost on film. By remastering for 3-D, I hope that some of this magic can be captured and shown to the audience in a way they've never seen before."

Selick is currently directing Laika Entertainment's "Coraline," starring Dakota Fanning, in Portland, Ore. "Coraline" is set to be the first stop-motion animated film shot stereoscopically with a dual digital camera rig for digital 3-D exhibition. Link

[photo by takejiro, posted by Sheigh]

Depp on Burton

My old Premiere cohort Mark Salisbury has updated his book, Burton on Burton. In this excerpt here, Johnny Depp writes about working with the director on "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

The experience of shooting the film with Tim was as good as anything gets. To me, it felt as if our brains were connected by a blistering hot wire that could have generated sparks at any minute. There were moments in certain scenes where we'd find ourselves precariously high on an unbelievably thin thread, trying to work out just how far the limits were, which would only give birth to more absurd notions and mirth.