Sweeney Todd Gory Scenes to Be Cut to Fit PG-13 Rating?

Those craving for plenty of blood and gore in the upcoming "Sweeney Todd" probably may not find what they wish to see in the flick when it hits theaters December 21 this year, three weeks earlier than its previously-slated release date of January 11, 2008.

According to U.K.'s Daily Mail, Warner Bros. Pictures as the studio producing the musical crime thriller has requested director Tim Burton to remove some R-rated sequences from the film so it can be released with a PG-13 MPAA tag. It appeared that the early footage from the movie was so extremely bloody that the studio execs have become a tad squeamish and wanted it to be re-cut instead.

"Tim’s not happy that the studio is asking for so many cuts to the cutting, as it were," a source close to the picture told the paper. "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. But that’s a bit difficult for a story involving a guy who gets high slitting throats."

As a story of a serial killer, it is inevitable that "Todd" contains a number of gory scenes so that Burton's dismay on Warner Bros.' preference to a PG-13 rating is therefore understandable. Among them, one said to have particularly bothered the studio involved a "ten-year-old boy cutting up body parts, which were then thrown into a meat grinder and turned into mince."