In a chat Tim Burton participated in with a group of journalists (us included) at the Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice junket, he opened up about making the sequel.
With just a few days to go before the Ghost with the Most re-enters our world, Warner Bros. held the press junket for Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice in New York City, with all of the stars in attendance. Aside from the video interviews (which you can check out here), director Tim Burton did a roundtable with a handful of press to talk all things his long-awaited sequel. Here are the highlights from that chat…
On if there was a temptation to make Beetlejuice more heroic this time around:
“Michael and I both love the fact that he was politically incorrect then and he’s politically incorrect now… Somebody asked him the other day, ‘so Michael, how has the Beetlejuice character evolved?’ And we just started laughing, because he doesn’t evolve. That’s the whole point.”
On seeing Michael Keaton return to the role of “Beetlejuice”:
“We didn’t rehearse and do anything. So he comes on, it was truly like a demon possession. It felt like a time warp. It was unnerving. It was great. It was exciting, but it was really also disturbing… That’s what gave the film its energy. You know, we’d make up stuff every day – which is kind of hard to do when you’re dealing with all live effects… Mike and I talked about this from the very beginning, that that was very important to the spirit, especially with all the technology… We just wanted to kind of not think about sequel or anything. Just go and make the movie. And so, like I said, that energy of what he brought back to it was, was amazing and crucial.”
On how long the film has been in development and why he wanted to make it now:
“It’s been asked (about) from the very beginning, right? But nothing clicked and truly, it couldn’t have happened until now. I just put all the noise away and I just go, okay, I love the Lydia character. That was the character that I connected with… So I go like, well, what happened to this person 35 years later? You know, what weird thing- you go from cool teenager to what some fucked up adult or what? And what relationships do you have when you have kids?
And it’s not something I could have done back then. It’s only something you could do once you experienced those things yourself. And so for me, this became a very personal movie. Like kind of a weird family movie about a weird family… But that became the emotional hook. The three generations of mother, daughter, granddaughter, life, death, you know, just basic, normal things that we all experience. And then especially if you’re lucky enough to get older a little bit, you kind of feel those things. So that’s where it really started. And it really could only have happened for me after all this time.”
On almost quitting directing features after Dumbo:
“I almost got out of making movies after my last one. ’cause I just didn’t feel this whole studio thing. I just didn’t feel, you know… So I went off and did the TV thing, Wednesday, in Romania, just to kind of… re-cleanse, so to speak, or re-energize, whatever. So I had no burning desire to make a sequel or anything. I just wanted to make this movie. So I think I’ve recalibrated the way I’m gonna approach things in the future.”
On bringing in his Wednesday star Jenna Ortega:
“She is Wednesday, you know what I mean? She’s really integral to this because she’s our entrance into this, she’s kind of the anchor of the film, it is actually really the story about her. And if you really want to boil it down, you know, her and her mother. And so she’s a really beautiful addition.”
On if he’d be down for a third “Beetlejuice” movie:
“If it follows the model now, I’d be making that one… I’d be over a hundred… Even if you said it to me, I would run the other direction. This is one where I just said it, it was something that caught my- I don’t know. Not right now, ’cause we’re finishing this one, basically.”
Make sure to check back bright and early tomorrow morning for our official Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice review!