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Acclaimed director Tim Burton and actor Michael Keaton, both Oscar nominees, are reuniting for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the highly anticipated sequel to Burton's award-winning supernatural comedy Beetlejuice.Keaton reprises his iconic role, joined by Oscar nominee Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz and two-time Emmy winner Catherine O'Hara as Delia Deetz. The cast also features new additions including Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, and Arthur Conti in his feature film debut. Emmy nominee Jenna Ortega stars as Lydia's daughter, Astrid, and Oscar nominee Willem Dafoe rounds out the ensemble.Following a shocking family loss, the three generations of the Deetz clan converge on their hometown of Winter River. Lydia, still scarred by her previous encounter with the mischievous specter Beetlejuice, finds her life thrown into upheaval when her defiant teenage daughter Astrid uncovers an eerie model of the town in the attic - and accidentally opens a portal to the Afterlife. With chaos mounting in both the mortal and supernatural realms, it's only a matter of time before Beetlejuice's name is uttered thrice, summoning the demonic entity to wreak his own brand of havoc.
Director/Producer Tim Burton had this to say about returning to the Beetlejuice franchise, "After the first movie, there was lots of talk about maybe a sequel, and there have been different ideas over the years, but nothing for me really clicked. And so, all this time goes by, 35 years, and what really got me interested and excited is… life. It’s like, what happened to the Deetz family? You know, it’s 35 years later, what happened to Lydia, this interesting teenager? And so, for me, and you start to use your own life experience: you’re an interesting teenager. What happens when you become an adult? Do you have children? What are your relationships like? What have you become? Things happen to all of us as we get older and change—relationships, children—all those things. That was the nucleus of it for me
that got me back interested in it—what happened to the Deetz family. It was quite emotional for me to
revisit these characters."
that got me back interested in it—what happened to the Deetz family. It was quite emotional for me to
revisit these characters."
Likewise, Michael Keaton commented that he was a little apprehensive about playing Beetlejuice again, "I was nervous, really nervous, because the choice that I made, that was a big leap. It was a risky move that happened to have worked. So then, you think, “Oh geez, can I pull that off again after all these years?” I think there was way more pressure on this one—we didn’t really want to mess this up. I was very nervous about it and me. But we hope we got there. I think we did."
The main concern on Burton's mind was keeping the film spiritually aligned with the original, I’ve worked with a lot of technologies and big movies, but I just recall that feeling. It happens to you when you first start out—with Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, I felt that. In your first early movies, there’s something about them that is just different, because you’re new to it. I’ve worked with different kinds of technology since, but working with live effects and puppets, makeup and sets… it just was part of the spirit of what that movie was. There’s an energy and a spontaneousness to it. And even though we were dealing with live effects, we were still kind of making it up as we went along in some cases. In life, sometimes, you’re surprised, and there are lots of pleasant surprises—and that was one of them. But since that’s what a surprise is, you can’t predict it, you don’t know, so… surprise."
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The cast has always had the utmost respect director Tim Burton and actress Winona Ryder feels that they both share a unique connection, "All the times that I’ve worked with him, he’s always just been Tim and I’ve always felt really connected to him… maybe because we knew each other back then. We have this through-line and a shorthand. I think there is an element of strange telepathy that goes on in terms of just knowing—I know what he means before he even has to say it, or even from a gesture. I understand exactly what he means. I’ve always and still have so much love for him."
Till this day Ryder still has fond memories of working on the original Beetlejuice, "I loved doing the ending of Beetlejuice, because a lot of the movie I was talking to miniature Michael. I didn’t have that much face-to-face with him, because I was speaking to a mark. And I remember that it was just really fun, because everybody was there. It was these crazy days that were just incredible… everyone was cracking up. It was wild. But I loved it. It was such a special experience for me. I mean, Beetlejuice had an enormous impact on my career. I’ve always basically credited it with being the thing that—I don’t know if “launch” is correct—but it definitely led to a lot of other opportunities. It was a seminal moment in my career. When I look back, Lydia is really up there as one of my favorite characters. I think there was something about her that people got. There was a real purity to Lydia—underneath all the somber black—she is actually a very relatable character. Everybody else is very much caught up in their egos and what they’re trying to do, and she’s the more grounded person, which is, I think, why she sees ghosts. She’s just more present. There was something about her that made a mark. I’ve always had a lot of people recognize me from that movie. It’s always been very moving to me that people of all ages, all cultures, all backgrounds love that movie. “Hey, you’re the girl from Beetlejuice!”
When you make a sequel it's hard not to be nostalgic and Keaton talked about what it was like to develop the Beetlejuice character, "Creating the character was… pure freedom. Pure freedom. “I’m just gonna go nuts. Hey, I’ve got an idea. I have no idea if this will work, but…” And we never rehearsed it. I’m 99% positive that we never put it on film to look at it. Tim had already started shooting—some scenes, some of the other cast, effects—and when I walked out of the trailer looking like I looked, it was either going to work or it wasn’t. And I’ll never forget—when I walked on the set, the crew started looking and I started hearing these guys. They had this quiet little chant: “Juice, Juice, Juice...” I’m thinking, “Wow, based on what? I didn’t do anything yet.” And honestly, I was ready for Tim and others to say, “Let’s go try it again,” or, “Let’s go mess with…” I mean, that was as likely as not. But I hit the ground running. And in improv, there’s the thing of “Yes, and…” You never stop the premise. It was the epitome of a “Yes, and…” experience. Because Tim had explained things to me and shown me things. That was one of the most fun aspects of it, really. How I’d see the set, the shrunken head guys and the whole thing, and it’s like, “Oh, I get it. Okay, here’s what’s going to happen. If I look at it like a painting—like I kind of look at all movies, but a painting—to fit in, I have to do that, and that, and that.” So, I’d start to run a scene at this level of energy, then I just kind of riff and go off. And Tim hadn’t known about it or seen it, and he’d go, “Oh, okay, okay.” And then he’d get excited, and he’d go, “Wait, wait, wait…” And he might move a camera. Or he might say, “Wait a minute. Why don’t you run up to the thing, stop here, and then turn around and…” He’d explain to me visually what was going to happen, which was really fun and exciting. It worked like that. Tim would say, “Okay, great, I love that. Do that just like that.” It was an exciting process."
Actress Monica Belucci is new to the Beetlejuice franchise and she really enjoyed working alongside her fellow actors, especially Keaton, "I have to say that I’m so honored to be part of this amazing cast, and to enter into Tim’s fantastic and magical world. His vision is so personal, so unique. And his characters often have naive and childlike qualities. And even the villains are, most of the time, unintentionally disruptive. There is so much substance for an actor in his fairy tales. Joining this film happened because Tim told me that there was a key role in the movie and he thought about me. I was very happy to accept it and to play it. Almost all my scenes are with Michael Keaton. And Michael was so kind. He has an amazing energy. So gentle and so creative. And it was beautiful to see the creative connection between Tim and Michael that has been built through the years. You can feel the energy that they know each other very well. It was beautiful for everybody to see this creative synergy between them from their years working together. I really loved working with him."
The unenviable task recreating the look and feel of the original film fell on production designer Mark Scruton, who shared Burton's desire to build on what had been done before, "Tim was very clear from the beginning—basically what was created in the original, but better. We weren’t trying to reinvent the wheel in any way, shape, or form. We just had to expand on what had been laid down. And that was something that I took very close to my heart as well, because I’m a big fan of Bo Welch, who designed the original—and his work not just with Beetlejuice, but with all his films—and I didn’t want in any way to betray that legacy that he had laid down. And Tim didn’t either. We just took what he’d done and built on it. We didn’t try to change any of the aesthetic or push it in different directions. We just wanted to expand the world that had already been created. That was the ethos from the very beginning and it didn’t change all the way through."
Scruton went on to add, "Recreating anything comes with challenges. I think the first one was obviously digging into the original film and making sure that we were recreating the original sets as faithfully as we could. Sometimes that was easy—we had drawings and models in Warner Bros.’ archive that we could draw on. Other times, it really was a forensic effort, literally going frame by frame through the movie and trying to find out how they achieved things—certain finishes, certain looks—specifically with the model in the attic set. There were no drawings or reference for that other than the film. We literally had to pick it apart and figure it all out from the ground up. So that was definitely the first challenge. Another challenge was completing all of our sets with such varying scale and look into detail within the production schedule. It became a game of chess to shoehorn everything into the spaces we had. We had five soundstages at [Warner Bros. Studios] Leavesden. And I think, at last count, it was 68 sets that we had to constantly change and redress, move or have ready. We were sort of always chasing each other around. It was a logistics effort as much as anything else to get everything in camera, because Tim is so specific about everything being complete environments, as opposed to relying on blue screen."
Once the sets were created it was the job of costume designer Colleen Atwood to make sure that the cast looked the part, "When actors do a movie like this, they know that it’s a movie where they’re wearing a costume. They’re not wearing clothes necessarily, but they can own it in their own way. So, each one of them we evolved. For instance, Michael really wanted to see the original tux. So, Warner Bros. archives gave it to me, we looked at it, he saw it—“Oh yeah, that’s what it was.” Then we kind of moved on. For him, the tux was the thing, not the striped suit. He really liked the tux more as his character than the stripes, even though the audience loves the other thing. For Winona, we kind of just did Lydia, with layers of clothing and comfortable stuff, so she could do her Lydia shuffle and all her characterful Lydia work. For Astrid, Jenna Ortega, she’s an activist, so her clothes are very work-a-day clothes. They’re not clothes that are conscious costumes—she’s probably the most realistic of the characters. And then we have Catherine O’Hara as Delia, an artistic character. She’s really living the conscious artist style. And Justin Theroux as Rory, who is a super stylish, and a little freaky, kind of guy, who’s tuned in to all the designers and trends. But he’s also very tuned in to Lydia—they were designed somewhat as a pod, co-dependent thing."
Everyone knows that in any Tim Burton creation there are going to be vast collection of fascinating creepy creatures that share screen time with their human counterparts. For Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Burton recruited special effects expert Neal Scanlan to provide all the delightfully creepy costars, "To create a creature, it nearly always starts with a discussion, either with Tim directly or through a script. The script may mention something, so one gets an idea. Next, we have a team of concept artists, and we sit around and have a fun time talking about how this could be and ultimately what are our options. We go online, we look at references. We look at the things that have come in the past; we look at the original film; we look at all kinds of things that might inspire us. We come up with a set of drawings. We show those to Tim. Either he will react and say, “That’s great, that’s exactly what I thought,” or something like, “No, but we’re going in the right direction,” and he will steer us to the place we need to be. Once we have that as a final design, we used to—and probably less so now—sculpt that character in the real world. Create physical models of the parts we’re going to do. We tend to do that more now in the computer, and that allows us to be able to create the character in a virtual environment before we commit to making it. That way we can show Tim again what it looks like, what the colors look like, the costume design, and maybe actually even put it in a virtual set to help explain the process of how we’re going to bring it to life on film.
From that point, we then commit to the making side of it, and that involves multiple departments, all who are brilliantly talented in their own way. They are all craftspeople in their own world—people who can make molds, who can paint things beautifully, who can put hair in, who can make the under-muscles—all\ those things. Those departments all come together in an almost parallel fashion to create the finished entity. When finished, we then engage with what we call performance, which is a group of performers who join us, rehearse and bring the character to life—either through physical rods, physical hand puppetry, by wearing the character, or maybe using things like animatronics, which is essentially radio-controlled robotic elements."
In the end, it's the relationship between Burton and Keaton that is the soul of ant Beetlejuice movie. Burton explains it this way, "We talked about it over the years, and I think we both had a similar attitude about it—if something feels right, we’ll do it. So that didn’t happen for all that time. And then it sort of… happened. We had conversations and he felt comfortable, and then we just got back into it. Working with Michael, it’s that sort of back and forth. He’s got such an energy and such an interesting take. It’s kind of like working with a prize fighter. “Okay, let’s try to do this and that.” But he’s very clever, very funny and very good. You get something back when you work with people like him. As with all these people—everybody [in the film]. It’s not that they’re just doing it, but they’re giving back something. There’s a back and forth, which is very exciting to work with. It was kind of amazing. It really tapped right back into it. It was like going to a weird wedding or funeral or reunion or something. It was very strange—and beautiful for me—to see all of this coming back to life."
Likewise Keaton shares the same admiration for Burton, "Just working with a pure artist. First of all, people know he’s funny, because they see his movies—and not all of his movies—but there’s a lot of humor in all of his movies, even in the really soulful, dark ones. I like that there were really funny things in Edward Scissorhands, which is one of my favorite Tim Burton movies. But he’s funny—like a guy-you-will-laugh-with funny. And it’s so much fun to be around, since I’ve done it like five times and we complement each other pretty well, I think. We’re really quite different and in a lot of ways, but we’re really… like-minded, or similar. The things we touch in common are strong. To be around an artist, someone original, is exciting. That doesn’t happen often."
Warner Bros. Pictures Presents A Tim Burton/Tommy Harper/Plan B Entertainment Production,
A Film by Tim Burton, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which will be released only in theaters and IMAX on
September 6, 2024, in North America, and internationally beginning 4 September 2024. It will be
distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures.
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