‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ First Look at Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder

Everyone’s favorite bio exorcist is back after 36 long years. The new film from Tim Burton which serves as a sequel to the classic Beetlejuice is almost here. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has offered us a first look at the stars of the movie. Check out the images below courtesy of Entertainment Weekly!

It’s really great to see the gang reunite with Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, and Michael Keaton. We also see newcomers Jenna Ortega and Justin Theroux in the pictures. We don’t have much details on the film just yet but Burton did sit down with EW to talk about some things check it out.

The sequel picks up decades later with a death in the family. “That’s all I will say,” Burton tells EW in an interview. “There’s something that happens that sets things in motion.” Could that be the death of Lydia’s father, Charles Deetz (Jeffrey Jones)? The director plays coy: “We’ll see.” One thing’s for sure, Beetlejuice comes back into play.

Burton describes getting Keaton back in the classic costume and makeup as “a weird out-of-body experience.”

“He just got back into it,” the filmmaker behind 1989’s Batman (also starring Keaton) and 1993’s The Nightmare Before Christmas recalls. “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.”

Burton says he and Keaton have talked about a sequel on and off over the years. “Unless it felt right, he had no burning desire to do it,” the director recalls. “I think we all felt the same way. It only made sense if it had an emotional hook.”

Many concepts were floated around, some dating all the way back to the ’80s, including a treatment set in Hawaii. “We talked about lots of different things,” Burton says. “That was early on when we were going, Beetlejuice and the Haunted MansionBeetlejuice Goes West, whatever. Lots of things came up.”

What they needed, however, was time. His actors, including Ryder and O’Hara, had all moved on to other projects after the original came out, and “nobody,” Burton notes, “was really pushing for it.” The filmmaker also admits he didn’t initially (and still doesn’t to some degree) understand the success of the first film, so he wasn’t motivated to move forward with an idea that didn’t excite him.

The hook he was looking for, as it turns out, revolves around Ryder’s Lydia and bringing together three generations of Deetz women, including O’Hara’s Delia and Ortega’s 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 explains. “That made it emotional, gave it a foundation. So that was the thing that really truly got me into it.”

Burton feels “a bit jinx-y” about revealing such things, given that he’s still shaping the movie in the editing phase. But he does confirm he’ll be using stop-motion animation to bring a lot of the classic Beetlejuice effects to the screen. “It needed a back-to-basics, handmade quality,” he says. “It reenergized why I love making movies.”

And what about that title? Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. “It’s been, what? Thirty-five years. So it didn’t feel like Beetlejuice 2 to me,” Burton says. “It didn’t feel like that kind of a movie. The other one I thought of, because one of my favorite Dracula movies is Dracula A.D. 1972, was Beetlejuice 2024 A.D. But this was a nice simple one.”

We do know of some of the other actors joining the ensemble with Monica Bellucci (Spectre), Arthur Conti (House of the Dragon), and Willem Dafoe (Poor Things) We’re excited for the film after looking at these new pictures. A trailer is surely imminent and could be here possibly this week. We will be sure to talk about it and let you know when it drops! What do you think about Beetlejuice Beetlejuice?

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will hit theaters on Sept. 6.

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