‘Beetlejuice 2’ first look returns Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder

It has been 36 years, however as soon as once more, the juice is free.

After reprising Batman in final yr’s The Flash, Michael Keaton returns to a different iconic function in Leisure Weekly‘s unique first take a look at Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel to director Tim Burton‘s cult hit.

Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara additionally reprise their roles as Lydia and Delia Deetz, respectively, whereas Burton’s Wednesday star Jenna Ortega performs Lydia’s daughter Astrid, and The Leftovers star Justin Theroux performs Rory. Additional particulars on Rory stay underneath wraps for now — in contrast to the titular “bio-exorcist.”

The unique Beetlejuice (1988) adopted the not too long ago deceased Barbara and Adam Maitland (Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin), who enlist the help of the mischievous demon Beetlejuice/Betelgeuse (Keaton), to expel the present residing residents of their house, the Deetz household. All hell, subsequently, breaks free.

The sequel picks up a long time later with a dying within the household. “That is all I’ll say,” Burton tells EW in an interview. “There’s one thing that occurs that units issues in movement.” Might that be the dying of Lydia’s father, Charles Deetz (Jeffrey Jones)? The director performs coy: “We’ll see.” One factor’s for certain, Beetlejuice comes again into play.

Burton describes getting Keaton again within the traditional costume and make-up as “a bizarre out-of-body expertise.”

“He simply bought again into it,” the filmmaker behind 1989’s Batman (additionally starring Keaton) and 1993’s The Nightmare Earlier than Christmas remembers. “It was sort of scary for someone who was perhaps not that overly all for doing it. It was such a wonderful factor for me to see all of the forged, however he, form of like demon possession, simply went proper again into it.”

Burton says he and Keaton have talked a couple of sequel on and off over time. “Except it felt proper, he had no burning want to do it,” the director remembers. “I believe all of us felt the identical method. It solely made sense if it had an emotional hook.”

Many ideas had been floated round, some relationship all the best way again to the ’80s, together with a therapy set in Hawaii. “We talked about numerous various things,” Burton says. “That was early on once we had been going, Beetlejuice and the Haunted Mansion, Beetlejuice Goes West, no matter. A lot of issues got here up.”

What they wanted, nonetheless, was time. His actors, together with Ryder and O’Hara, had all moved on to different tasks after the unique got here out, and “no person,” Burton notes, “was actually pushing for it.” The filmmaker additionally admits he did not initially (and nonetheless does not to some extent) perceive the success of the primary movie, so he wasn’t motivated to maneuver ahead with an thought that did not excite him.

The hook he was in search of, because it seems, revolves round Ryder’s Lydia and bringing collectively three generations of Deetz ladies, together with O’Hara’s Delia and Ortega’s Astrid. “I so recognized with the Lydia character, however then you definitely get to all these years later, and you are taking your individual journey, going from cool teenager to lame grownup, forwards and backwards once more,” he explains. “That made it emotional, gave it a basis. In order that was the factor that basically actually bought me into it.”

Different particulars on the movie itself are being saved secret for now, aside from the presence of Monica Bellucci (Spectre), Arthur Conti (Home of the Dragon), and Willem Dafoe (Poor Issues) among the many forged. (Dafoe previously disclosed his function as a B-movie motion star who died and have become a police officer within the Afterlife.) Burton feels “a bit jinx-y” about revealing such issues, provided that he is nonetheless shaping the film within the enhancing part. However he does affirm he’ll be utilizing stop-motion animation to convey quite a lot of the traditional Beetlejuice results to the display. “It wanted a back-to-basics, handmade high quality,” he says. “It reenergized why I really like making films.”

And what about that title? Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. “It has been, what? Thirty-five years. So it did not really feel like Beetlejuice 2 to me,” Burton says. “It did not really feel like that sort of a film. The opposite one I considered, as a result of one in every of my favourite Dracula films is Dracula A.D. 1972, was Beetlejuice 2024 A.D. However this was a pleasant easy one.”

Simply do not say the identify yet one more time, otherwise you danger summoning the person himself.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will hit theaters on Sept. 6.

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