DreamWorks Studios has announced a February 5, 2007, start date for the film version of Sweeney Todd, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Tim Burton will direct Johnny Depp in the title role, with production scheduled for London's Pinewood Studios.
Although no further casting has been announced, Burton has tapped two time Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood Memoirs of a Geisha and Oscar-nominated cinematographer Dante Spinotti L.A. Confidential for the film.
As previously reported, the script for Sweeney Todd is by John Logan The Aviator, Gladiator, The Last Samurai, Star Trek: Nemesis, Any Given Sunday, who began his career as a Chicago-based playwright. He is the author of Never the Sinner, a well-received play about murderers Leopold and Loeb, which had a five-month run off-Broadway at the John Houseman Theatre in 1998, and Hauptman, about the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, which ran for a month at the Cherry Lane Theatre in 1992 with Denis O'Hare in the title role.
