Corpse Bride
Corpse Bride (also known as Tim Burton's Corpse Bride) is a 2005 British-American stop-motion animated musical dark comedy film directed by Mike Johnson and Tim Burton with a screenplay by John August, Caroline Thompson and Pamela Pettler based on characters created by Burton and Carlos Grangel. The plot is set in a fictional Victorian era village in Europe. Johnny Depp leads the cast as the voice of Victor, while Helena Bonham Carter voices Emily, the titular bride. "Corpse Bride" is the third stop-motion feature film produced by Burton and the first directed by him (the previous two films, "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "James and the Giant Peach", were directed by Henry Selick). This is also the first stop-motion feature from Burton that was distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures. It was dedicated to executive producer Joe Ranft, who died in a car accident during production.
Corpse Bride
In a 2005, interview with About.com, Burton spoke about the differences between directing "Corpse Bride" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas", saying: "The difference on that was that one I had designed completely. It was a very completed package in my mind. I felt like it was there. I felt more comfortable with it. With this, it was a bit more organic. It was based on an old folk tale. We kept kind of changing it but, you know, I had a great co-director with Mike Johnson. I feel like we complemented each other quite well. It was just a different movie, a different process." He also spoke about casting Johnny Depp as Victor, saying: "It was weird because we were doing both at the same time. He was Willy Wonka by day and Victor by night so it might have been a little schizophrenic for him. But he’s great. It's the first animated movie he's done and he's always into a challenge. We just treat it like fun and a creative process. Again, that’s the joy of working with him. He's kind of up for anything. He just always adds something to it. The amazing thing is all the actors never worked [together]. They were never in a room together, so they were all doing their voices, except for Albert [Finney] and Joanna [Lumley] did a few scenes together, everybody else was separate. They were all kind of working in a vacuum, which was interesting. That’s the thing that I felt ended up so beautifully, that their performances really meshed together. So he was very canny, as they all were, about trying to find the right tone and making it work while not being in the same room with each other."