Tim Burton's Bloody Christmas

Dec. 18, 2007— -- Tim Burton's new movie may live up to one of the acclaimed filmmaker's past films and cause quite a few real-life nightmares before Christmas.

"Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," a remake of Stephen Sondheim's Broadway musical about a murderous barber hell-bent on revenge, stars frequent Burton collaborators Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter in roles many people have yet to see -- singers.

"It's like 'The Sound of Music," but with blood in it," Burton said as he stopped by ABC News Now's "Popcorn" to discuss the movie with Rolling Stone's Peter Travers.

According to Burton, the "Sweeney Todd" stars lack of musical training gave the film an emotional quality unachievable by actors with a singing background.

"I realized after casting a few parts that none of [the actors cast] were professional singers, but when I heard them [sing] they brought something to it which I thought was really amazing," Burton said of Depp and Carter. "They brought an emotional quality to it. They couldn't rely on their singing ability, so something had to come from within."

Despite being the mother of Burton's two children, Carter had to go through a rigorous auditioning ordeal for her role as Mrs. Lovett, a pie maker who grinds up Todd's victims into meat pies. In the end, the filmmaker decided she was right for the role opposite Depp.

"Part of it is the image of those two together. They're such a weird couple, which was very important in the kind of visual quality of them," Burton said. "I always had this image of, because I used to love to go to wax museums, that if I could see those two figures in a wax museum, then that's the right image."

Having music on the set was also a liberating experience for stars like Depp.

"[Johnny] picking up a razor to music, he picks it up completely different to music than he would if he was to just walk over and pick up a razor. It was amazing to see actors acting sort of rhythmically in a way that I've never seen them act before," Burton said. "It also galvanizes everybody, the crew, everybody gets in the same zone. You see people, the grips, mouthing the words -- there's a unifying force to [the music] that's really amazing."

Please click here to read Peter Travers' Rolling Stone review of "Sweeney Todd."