Michael Keaton Says He ‘Let Down’ Tim Burton in ‘Dumbo’ Remake: ‘I Sucked’

August 28, 2024 @ 6:22 PM

Michael Keaton has a lot of career highs to look back on, but there’s at least one role that he doesn’t enjoy revisiting. As he told the New York Times in an interview published Tuesday, “I was clueless on ‘Dumbo.’ I sucked in ‘Dumbo.’”

Keaton was joined in the interview by his “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” costars Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara as well as the film’s director Tim Burton – who also directed the 2019 live-action remake of “Dumbo.”

The pair first worked together on 1988’s “Beetlejuice.” Keaton’s comment came as he and Burton spoke about the films they’ve made; he said in full, “I love working with Tim so much, but I don’t think we ever really analyzed why we work pretty well together; we just do. I think I let him down on one movie, but that’s just me, and it bugs me to this day. I was clueless on ‘Dumbo.’ I sucked in ‘Dumbo.’”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about, but whatever,” Burton answered.

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” will land in theaters in September. The long-awaited sequel “couldn’t have been made until now,” Burton told the Times. He added that part of his interest in making the second film was finding out where Ryder’s Lydia Deetz ended up.

“That was my interest in this [sequel], because you were such a powerful character. For everybody that was a cool teenager, what happens to you as an adult? What’s important to you? What are your relationships like? What happens when you’ve got kids? For me, this movie couldn’t have been made until now. I understand all these things a bit more because of my own strange journey,” Burton explained.

Elsewhere in the interview, Keaton described making the first movie as “freewheeling in the best possible way.” He added, “It was the ultimate ‘yes and’: If I did something, Tim would let me go and then he’d throw in another suggestion.”

You can read the entire interview at the New York Times.