Tim Burton is back, baby!
The legendary cult filmmaker was in high spirits at the 81st Venice Film Festival for the world premiere of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. The long-awaited and hotly-anticipated sequel to Burton 1988 fantasy-horror-comedy will open the 2024 Venice Film Festival Wednesday night. Burton said the movie felt like a return to his roots, to the improvisational and free spirit chaos of the original.
“Over the past few years I got a little bit disillusioned with the movie industry, I sort of lost myself,” said Burton, “For me I realised the only way to be a success is that I have to love doing it. For this one, I just enjoyed and loved making it.”
Burton it has taken him so long to revisit Beetlejuice, despite constant fan demand for a sequel, because he “never quite understood why it had been a success.” For Beetlejuice Beetlejuice he said he decided to return to the “spirit of the original” film ditching the typical long production and shooting process of his more recent films in favour of a fast improvisational approach.
“We did everything quickly. the things that usually take months we did quickly,” said Burton. “There was a lot of improvisation. Even the ending wasn’t written in the script. We were playing with everything…It just gave [the new film] an energy and a personal nature to it that everyone contributed to it.”
It’s taken Burton a generation to return to the twisted world of Beetlejuice, but fans appear to think it will be work the wait. The Warner Bros. title is tracking to open as high as $80 million at the North American box office when it bows in theaters on Sept. 6, according to sources with access to data from leading research firm NRG. Warner Bros. has been more conservative in its estimates, suggesting an opening weeked in the $65 million to $75 million range. Either way, the movie should scare up a healthy return for the studio and for Burton, who has not released a feature since 2019’s Dumbo.
Burton was joined by pretty much the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice cast at the Venice presser including Winona Ryder, Michael Keaton, and Catherine O’Hara — all reprising their roles from the original —and franchise newcomers Jenna Ortega, Justin Theroux, Willem Dafoe, and Monica Bellucci.
Even the special and practical effects were done quickly, giving the movie a homemade feel.
“It’s not going to win any Academy Awards for special effects, but it doesn’t matter,” joked Burton, who admitted he didn’t even rewatch the original film before starting the sequel.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice focuses on Ryder’s character Lydia Deetz, now a TV psychic, who returns with her family to her family home after the death of her father. Ortega plays Lydia’s daughter Astrid, who doesn’t believe in ghosts or the afterlife. As seen in the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice‘s teaser trailer which dropped in March, Keaton returns as the titular demon, once again set loose to wreak havoc.
Burton directed the sequel from a script by Wednesday showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, with Seth Grahame-Smith credited for his work on the film’s story.
While he said he had been thinking of the Beetlejuice sequel for some time now, Burton said making Wednesday got him “re-energized” to return to filmmaking.
But whatever the reception of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Burton said fans shouldn’t be holding their breath for Beetlejuice 3.
“We’ll let’s do the math,” he said, noting it took more than 30 years between the first and second films. For the third, “I’d be over a hundred. I guess it’s possible with medical science these days. But I don’t think so!”
