“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” Tim Burton’s long-awaited sequel to his 1988 classic, hits theaters in September and after a brief teaser trailer debuted earlier this year, new footage of the film was just screened at CinemaCon – with a particular emphasis on Jenna Ortega’s character Astrid Deetz, daughter of Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) and granddaughter of Delia Deetz (Catherine O’Hara).
“It’s a big, weird home movie for me,” Burton said in a behind the scenes clip. Burton added that he wanted to see what happened to the three generations of the Deetz family with this new film.
Michael Keaton, who plays the title character, made a surprise appearance at the CinemaCon stage and praised the sequel, saying, “I’ll tell you this though — it’s really f*cking good. In fact, it’s great.”
A sequel to “Beetlejuice” has been in the works since almost immediately after the first film was released. Infamously, in 1990, Burton hired Jonathan Gems (who would later write “Mars Attacks!” for Burton and worked on a number of unmade projects for the filmmaker) to write “Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian,” which would have incorporated elements of beach movies and had Betelgeuse enter a surf competition. That version of the sequel was mired in development hell and studio second-guessing throughout the 1990’s, with additional ideas being floated.
In 2011, the project rose from the dead when Warner Bros. hired Seth Grahame-Smith, who had collaborated with Burton on “Dark Shadows,” to write and produce a new version of the sequel. (Grahame-Smith still has a story credit on “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”) Work continued but, in 2019, Warner Bros. announced the sequel had been canceled.
All of this changed in 2022, when the movie was announced again, with Brad Pitt’s production banner Plan B signing on to produce. At the time Burton said he wasn’t involved but quickly backtracked. By 2023 much of the original cast, along with Ortega (star of Burton’s “Wednesday”) and several other new cast members.
Now it’s finally happening. Betelgeuse is loose again.
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” will be released on September 6.
