Tim Burton Says He “Was a Little Bit Lost” Before Returning to His Roots With ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’

Tim Burton is back, baby!

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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’s 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 realized 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 said it took 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 decided to return to the “spirit of the original” film, ditching the typical long production and shooting process of his more recent films in favor of a fast, improvisational approach.

“We did everything quickly; the things that usually take months we did quickly,” said Burton. “We’d go buy a doll from a toy store and rip it up and put rods on it and do some stuff. That was the spirit, and it doesn’t always happen in films. It has an energy and a personal nature to it that everybody contributed to.”

Burton encouraged improvisation on set. “Even the ending wasn’t written. We were playing with everything,” he said.

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 before starting the sequel.

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 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 weekend 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 .

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Burton was joined by pretty much the entire Beetlejuice Beetlejuice cast at the Venice press conference, 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.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice focuses on Ryder’s 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 that 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, Burton said making Wednesday got him “reenergized” to return to filmmaking.

“And meeting [ Wednesday star] Jenna [Ortega] obviously was such an important thing for me,” said Burton. “Working with her and just thinking about the Lydia character and what happened to her 35 years later, and thinking about my own life, about what happened to get kids or relationships. It just became a very simple, emotional movie. It’s like a weird family movie, you know? It was never [about making] a big sequel for money or anything like that. I just wanted to make this for very personal reasons.”

Whatever the reception of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice , in Venice and at the box office, Burton said fans shouldn’t be holding their breath for Beetlejuice 3 .

“Well, let’s do the math,” he said, noting it took more than 35 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!”

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