HorrorMovies.ca has a brief interview snippet with director Tim Burton discussing SWEENEY TODD, specifically whether a bloody horror musical is likely to be a box office hit:
Well you know it’s always a risk. I remember when I first saw the show in London back when I was still a student. I didn’t know anything about the music and I remember seeing the show and these two ladies, these very proper, British ladies were sitting in front of me and they were kind of chatting throughout the show…
…and then when Joanna came up and the blood started spurting across the stage they both stopped and paused for a minute and, one leaned over and said “Was that really necessary?”
But in fact it was necessary and I’ve seen other productions of it where you know they’ve tried to be a bit more politically correct and skimp on it and it really lost something, because I mean the show is based in those old, grand cinemas, horror theatre melodramas, where you know they had buckets pouring out over the stage.
So, it just felt like that was true to the spirit of what the show is, it was and is over-the-top It’s more of an emotional release than it is a reality thing in this movie. So the studio they were cool about it, they accepted it, they knew it because they knew what the show was so there wasn’t you know. But you know anything, any movie is a risk, but it’s nice to be able to do something like that where you know it doesn’t fit into either musical or slasher movie category; kind of its own category.