For Michael Keaton, Becoming Beetlejuice Again Was “Like Demon Possession”
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice….well, you know the rest. Thirty-six years after the original film hit theaters, Oscar nominee Michael Keaton’s zany, mischievous demon will return in the Beetlejuice sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, on September 6.
In a first look for EW, director Tim Burton spilled some deets about the Deetz family and his follow-up to the cult classic 1988 film. The sequel reunites Keaton’s titular demon with Catherine O’Hara and Winona Ryder’s stepmother-stepdaughter duo, Lydia and Delia Deetz. It also introduces Wednesday star Jenna Ortega as Astrid Deetz, Lydia’s daughter.
The original hit film followed recently deceased couple Barbara (Geena Davis) and Adam Maitland (Alec Baldwin), who called upon eccentric demon Beetlejuice to scare the Deetz family out of their home. According to Burton, the sequel jumps decades into the future and kicks off with a death in the Deetz family. When asked if the death might be Lydia’s father, Charles Deetz—played in the original film by Jeffrey Jones—Burton replied with a cryptic “we’ll see.” (In 2003, Jones pleaded no contest to employing a 14-year-old boy to pose for sexually explicit photos; since then, he’s been a registered sex offender.)
The 36-year wait between movies wasn’t by design, but rather due to interest level. “Nobody was really pushing for it,” says Burton of a sequel, noting that the starry Beetlejuice cast all quickly moved on to other projects. Yet over the years, multiple concepts for sequels have been bandied about between Burton and Keaton, including one that would have sent Beetlejuice to Hawaii. “We talked about lots of different things,” said Burton. “That was early on when we were going, Beetlejuice and the Haunted Mansion, Beetlejuice Goes West, whatever.”
What ultimately motivated Burton to make a sequel was the idea of combining three generations of Deetz women in Delia, Lydia, and Astrid. “I so identified with the Lydia character, but then you get to all these years later, and you take your own journey, going from cool teenager to lame adult, back and forth again,” he said. “That made it emotional, gave it a foundation. So that was the thing that really truly got me into it.”
Once the sequel was up and running, Burton was surprised by how easy it was for everything to fall back into place, particularly regarding Keaton’s ability to channel the titular demon. “He just got back into it,” said Burton. “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.” Keaton will be joined by Monica Bellucci, Arthur Conti, Justin Theroux, and Oscar nominee Willem Dafoe, who previously revealed he’ll be playing a B-movie action star who died and became a police officer in the afterlife.
More specific plot details for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice are still top secret, but in an interview for Vanity Fair’s 2024 Hollywood Issue, Ortega expressed her excitement for the return of the franchise. “To bring Beetlejuice back—of all of the stories—is so good because people need to revisit weird, strange, off-putting stories again,” she said. “We need to introduce the younger generation that’s always on the phone to new artistic and creative ideas. The weirder you get with it, the more people you can get to see it, I think will probably do a lot for film in general.”
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