Alan Rickman is getting in touch in touch with his musical self.

In a story from Screen Daily, the actor is set to play Judge Turpin in Tim Burton's big screen version of Sweeney Todd.

In the film, Johnny Depp will star as the titular Demon Barber of Fleet Street from the award-winning Stephen Sondheim musical thriller.

The Broadway production of Sweeney Todd, with Sondheim's music and lyrics and a book by Hugh Wheeler based on the play by Christopher Bond, opened in 1979 and won eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical. Its mix of the comic, the dramatic and the macabre held together by Sondheim's movie-like score has had hundreds of productions throughout the world. A highly acclaimed revival is now playing in New York.

The story of Sweeney Todd is of a wrongfully imprisoned barber in Victorian England who sets out to seek revenge on the judge who imprisoned him. The plot is foreshadowed in the first lines of the opening number: "Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd./His skin was pale and his eye was odd./He shaved the faces of gentlemen/Who never thereafter were heard of again."

The film is scheduled to be released sometime in 2007 from Paramount Pictures.