You kinda have to wonder what exactly Warner Bros. thought it was going to get in a film about a brutal serial killer helmed by goth-minded director Tim Burton. But the London Daily Mail is reporting that execs are so freaked about the superbloody content of Burton's Sweeney Todd that they've asked him to make cuts to his flick about slasher Todd (Johnny Depp), who slits the throats of his barber-shop clients, then drops them down a hole and into the pastry shop of Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), who grinds them up and uses them as filling for her mince pies. Piles and piles of prosthetic limbs were used during filming, while four crew members pumped fake blood as Todd hacked his way through his victims, singing along while he worked. The Daily Mail reports that some crew members had to take "fresh air" breaks during bloody filming, and Warner Bros. execs were reportedly particularly creeped out by a scene in which a 10-year-old boy does the grinding for Mrs. Lovett's pie filling. "Tim's not happy that the studio is asking for so many cuts to the cutting, as it were," a source says. "The 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." The movie hits theaters on Dec. 21.
