The 1936 film version of Sweeney Todd faced similar criticism: .
The recent movie's Sweeney Todd– ness echoes back to the original stage play, with Sweeney's strange makeup, his habit of murdering victims in his barber's chair, an ill-treated apprentice, and Mrs. Lovett's conveniently located meat pie shop Each time a new generation retells an old story, the storyteller owes a debt to the storytellers of the past, but the story must also shift to meet the desires of the new era The hour-long feature films starring Tod Slaughter as a melodramatic villain and produced by George King, recorded on Vistatone under license from Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company, Ltd., are probably not "great works of art." But, then, neither were their source materials. (Curry 20).
The most recent versions of both films owe much of their success to the musical adaptations on stage, but that is not the only element that made them successful.
Another component shared by both Sweeney Todd and Little Shop of Horrors was the choice of the right actors for the leading roles. Director Tim Burton had worked with actor Johnny Depp on several feature films: Edward Scissorhands (1990), Ed Wood (1994), Sleepy Hollow (1999), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), and Corpse Bride (2005). Of these, only Corpse Bride could be considered a musical, and that is a shaky label at best, because the film only contains four songs. The Burton-Depp collaborations are well-known to modern moviegoers. Depp was surprised to be asked to perform such a challenging musical role. In Depp's interview with Steve Daly for Entertainment Weekly from 2007, Daly writes, "Six years ago, his director pal Tim Burton turned up with an original cast recording of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. 'I thought, That's weird,' says Depp. 'I wonder why he gave me that'" (Daly). Depp had no reason to believe that he would one day be starring in the role of Sweeney Todd, and the questions asked by Steve Daly were.
