Here’s your first look at Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which "reenergized" Tim Burton’s love of filmmaking
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, starring Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Jenna Ortega, premieres September 6
’80s nostalgia never dies, and neither does Betelgeuse, the immortal demon who terrorized the Deetz family in Tim Burton’s beloved horror comedy. According to Burton and star Michael Keaton, ideas for raising the undead have been thrown around since the first one premiered (“Beetlejuice and the Haunted Mansion, Beetlejuice Goes West, whatever. Lots of things came up,” says Burton), but the sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will finally hit theaters on September 6. Now, more than 30 years after his original introduction, we have our first look at the ghoul himself (below), secured by Entertainment Weekly.
Burton tells Entertainment Weekly that Keaton “had no burning desire to do” a sequel “unless it felt right,” but when he got to the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice set “He just got back into it. It was kind of scary for somebody who was maybe not that overly interested in doing it. It was such a beautiful thing for me to see all the cast, but he, sort of like demon possession, just went right back into it.”
For his part, Keaton recently told People that this movie was “the most fun I’ve had on set in a long time.” Similarly, Jenna Ortega—who plays Lydia’s (Winona Ryder) daughter Astrid, seen in the other first-look image—said this movie “was probably the happiest I had ever seen Tim on a set. He’s clapping at the monitor and shouting and laughing, which was really, really endearing.”
All three agree that part of the joy of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was the craft. “It needed a back-to-basics, handmade quality,” Burton told EW. “It reenergized why I love making movies.” Keaton agreed in his own interview, “What made it fun was watching somebody in the corner actually holding something up for you, to watch everybody in the shrunken head room and say, ‘Those are people under there, operating these things, trying to get it right. It’s the most exciting thing. When you get to do that again after years of standing in front of a giant screen, pretending somebody’s across the way from you, this is just enormous fun.”
In another interview for The Jess Cagle Show, Keaton added that he’d seen a cut of the film “and I confidently say this thing is great. … The [original] was so fun and exciting visually. It’s all that but really kind of beautiful, and interestingly emotional here and there. I wasn’t ready for that. It’s great.”
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice stars Keaton, Ryder, Ortega, Catherine O’Hara, Justin Theroux (as a “bio-exorcist” named Rory), Monica Bellucci, Arthur Conti, and Willem Dafoe.