“Things happen to all of us as we get older and change—relationships, children—all those things. That was the nucleus of it for me that got me back interested in it. It was quite emotional for me to revisit the characters,” says creative visionary Tim Burton, a genre unto himself, who directs the long-awaited sequel to Burton’s award-winning Beetlejuice from a screenplay by Alfred Gough & Miles Millar, story by Gough & Millar and Seth Grahame-Smith, based on characters created by Michael McDowell & Larry Wilson.
“I still don’t understand it. [laughs] I think I’ve said this a thousand times, but it’s true: it is unique. And there’s no such thing as “really unique” or “very unique.” It’s something that’s either unique or not. And Beetlejuice is unique,” says Michael Keaton who returns to his iconic role. “And it’s just 100% original. I’ve always described it as a piece of art. You could almost grab the movie and, if you could, hang it somewhere. But it’s also kind of timeless and must touch things in people. And I just think people were drawn to this really unusual visual treat. Because a lot of it is the visuals and the visual jokes. It’s really interesting how much people react so positively to pure imagination from Tim. Just pure imagination. No one ever saw anything like that.”
‘I was nervous, really nervous, because the choice that I made, that was a big leap. It was a risky move that happened to have worked,” says Keaton. “So then, you think, “Oh geez, can I pull that off again after all these years?” I think there was way more pressure on this one—we didn’t really want to mess this up. I was very nervous about it and me. But we hope we got there. I think we did.
After an unexpected family tragedy, three generations of the Deetz family return home to Winter River. Still haunted by Beetlejuice, Lydia’s life is turned upside down when her rebellious teenage daughter, Astrid, discovers the mysterious model of the town in the attic and the portal to the Afterlife is accidentally opened. With trouble brewing in both realms, it’s only a matter of time until someone says Beetlejuice’s name three times and the mischievous demon returns to unleash his very own brand of mayhem.
In conversation with screenwriters Alfred Gough & Miles Millar
Creating history…
ALFRED GOUGH, Screenplay/Story Writer: I think the character that Michael and Tim created, you had just not seen that person before. And what’s great about horror and comedy is that their rhythms are very close. And that’s something that Tim does particularly well. Even though Beetlejuice was technically his second movie, it was really kind of the foundational Tim Burton movie. You see the animation, the quirky characters, and Winona, who became his muse in those early productions.
MILES MILLAR, Screenplay/Story Writer: And I think we still haven’t seen anything like it. It’s so unique. And also, the production design, the stylistic elements. And even for us, the camera moves. It’s very, very Tim. It’s a filmmaker of his iconic status really finding himself in that movie and in this very particular kind of tone. The movie has lasted the test of time because it is so unique and original, and while it speaks to its time, it’s also timeless.
Genesis…
ALFRED GOUGH: We were on the set of Wednesday and we would meet with Tim every morning and basically go through the scenes. Then we got a call that he wanted to meet us after wrap one night, which was highly unusual. We were like, “Hope there’s nothing wrong.” We went into the trailer and Tim told us that he wanted to do a Beetlejuice sequel. It’s the movie that people come up and asked him about the most, and he felt like the time was right. That’s really how it came about. We met with him the following weekend and he gave us his ideas for what he wanted in the movie—we worked on the story, came back and pitched it and he loved it. Then, we wrote the movie. For us, it was an incredibly simple development process, because we were writing for an audience of one, which was Tim Burton.
MILES MILLAR: And the process from sitting in that trailer in the depths of Romania to actually getting the movie made was nothing in terms of Hollywood time. So, it was really an incredibly joyful experience. We watched the first movie probably three or four times as we worked on the story, so we could really honor the legacy of the first film—so, there’s a continuum. This is a very different movie, but there are so many Easter eggs and nods to the first one that I think fans will really enjoy the elements that we put in there. But obviously, it’s also incredibly accessible to a new audience and to people who haven’t seen Beetlejuice before. I think that’s something that was really exciting for us as writers and creators to bring to this movie.
Resurrecting Beetlejuice…
ALFRED GOUGH: I think what keeps Beetlejuice interesting is that you never know what he’s going to do next. He is an agent of chaos and that is really his function in the movie. And the movie’s called Beetlejuice and it’s about Beetlejuice, but he comes in at very specific times to really make things harder, ratchet things up, throw a spanner in the works and to do these insane things. It was such a fun character to write, because he’s completely unhinged. He can say and do anything. That’s what made it. And to be honest, you’d never really seen Beetlejuice, but certainly today, it’s not a character that you see in movies.
MILES MILLAR: For us, he’s like a dark-hearted cartoon, really. He’s a Warner Bros. cartoon on acid. And what’s interesting—and Tim was very clear about—Beetlejuice is in the first movie for 11 minutes. And he really wanted to maximize his impact whenever he was onscreen, so it became about pulling back on Beetlejuice, like “Too much Beetlejuice” was always the note. So that was really interesting. But he’s such a fun character to write—just his lines and the visual gags you can do, along with his flexibility… you know, he does a lot of gross stuff. And as a writer, it’s really fun to stretch your imagination.
In conversation with director-producer Tim Burton
Returning to Beetlejuice…
TIM BURTON: After the first movie, there was lots of talk about maybe a sequel, and there have been different ideas over the years, but nothing for me really clicked. And so, all this time goes by, 35 years, and what really got me interested and excited is… life. It’s like, what happened to the Deetz family? You know, it’s 35 years later, what happened to Lydia, this interesting teenager? And so, for me, and you start to use your own life experience: you’re an interesting teenager. What happens when you become an adult? Do you have children? What are your relationships like? What have you become? Things happen to all of us as we get older and change—relationships, children—all those things. That was the nucleus of it for me that got me back interested in it—what happened to the Deetz family. It was quite emotional for me to revisit these characters.
Making the sequel with the same spirit…
TIM BURTON: I’ve worked with a lot of technologies and big movies, but I just recall that feeling. It happens to you when you first start out—with Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, I felt that. In your first early movies, there’s something about them that is just different, because you’re new to it. I’ve worked with different kinds of technology since, but working with live effects and puppets, makeup and sets… it just was part of the spirit of what that movie was. There’s an energy and a spontaneousness to it. And even though we were dealing with live effects, we were still kind of making it up as we went along in some cases. In life, sometimes, you’re surprised, and there are lots of pleasant surprises—and that was one of them. But since that’s what a surprise is, you can’t predict it, you don’t know, so… surprise.
In camera…
TIM BURTON: We tried to do all effects as live as possible. We try to keep digital things to a minimum. And so, we wound up with this weird kind of thing where it felt like more of a performance art piece. So, for instance, introducing Monica’s character, Delores—we added a few digital things to it, but the main part of it was doing it live. Because that was an important thing for me—from effects to sets and everything—just across the board, no digital. Let’s just go back and make it, like we did in the past. So, it felt like a weird performance art piece and it took a little while. But, for me, it’s worth it.
Sketches / The Afterlife…
TIM BURTON: I did sketch some things on this one. And I had fun doing it. I’m lucky to work with people who can interpret what my sketches look like. I did a couple of characters here and there. Some characters are in the film. Some, I’ll have to save for the DVD extras, the grown-ups only content that didn’t make it into the film. It’s like doing an animation in a sense, in that everybody contributed. I did some drawings, [animatronic/special makeup effects supervisor] Neil Scanlan did all the effects, and his people did effects, so it was like a contest. It was fun to work that way.
It’s a kind of free for all. I had some ideas, I did some sketches, and then I threw it out to everybody—the art department, the makeup department, craft services—anybody. It’s pooling ideas together. And like I said, I did a few that maybe crossed the line that wouldn’t make it in, but everything else… it was like casting. You try to mix and match. I’d worked with Neil before. And he was like the actors. He fit right into the spirit of it, because we did a lot of live effects, but we did them quickly, and usually that kind of stuff can take forever. So, we just went with the spirit of doing it—like, instead of building this giant puppet, we cut up a doll, put some rods into it and made it work. It’s literally, “Let’s go to the toy store, buy something, rip it up and make something out of it.” All of those things went into coming up with and creating those Afterlife characters.
Theater-going experience growing up…
TIM BURTON: Oh, yeah. There was a theater in Burbank [California], the Cornell Theater—they’d show triple features for 50 cents. Absolutely, I’ll never forget those first theater experiences. I remember seeing Jason and the Argonauts as my first movie and I still remember it. So, those things can impact you—or they did to me—and I think they still can to some degree… and that’s amazing. A few years ago, there seemed to be a very polarized thing with cinema or TV, and it was like, “What’s it going to be?” And I think luckily what we’ve seen is that movies are important. Seeing something on a big screen… like this movie, we made it for the big screen. You make it to be felt in a cinema. You make it for the scope and the size and the sound, and all of that. So, it’s very important. And luckily, I think that polarization is diminishing a little bit, and people still realize how important and how beautiful an experience it is to go to a movie.
Copyright: © 2024 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.
TIM BURTON (Director / Producer), director and artist, is widely regarded as one of cinema’s most imaginative and visual filmmakers. Both his live-action and animated films have earned Academy Awards, Golden Globes, BAFTAs and many other industry accolades, cementing his status as one of the greatest film makers of our time.
He has a dedicated following, notably for classic features such as Beetlejuice (1988); Edward Scissorhands (1990); and Sweeny Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) as well as blockbuster hits Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992); Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005); and Alice in Wonderland (2010). He helped to reinvigorate the stop-motion industry with his 1993 creation and cult classic Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, followed by Corpse Bride (2005) and Frankenweenie (2012). Burton most recently produced and directed four episodes of the hit Netflix series, Wednesday (2022).
Long before becoming a director, Burton expressed himself through drawing, painting, poetry and photography, all of which have been documented in books The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories, The Napkin Art of Tim Burton and the 2009 release, The Art of Tim Burton, a 430-page volume comprising more than 40 years of his personal and professional artwork. Coinciding with the release of The Art of Tim Burton, the Museum of Modern Art opened an extensive exhibition of his work in New York, which went on to tour in Melbourne, Toronto, Los Angeles, Paris and Seoul. A second exhibition of his artwork, The World of Tim Burton, continues to tour internationally.
ALFRED GOUGH & MILES MILLAR (Screenplay by / Story by / Executive Producers) are prolific writers and producers in both TV and film. They are creative partners who first paired up while attending the Peter Stark Producing Program at USC.
Most recently, they created and are showrunners of Netflix’s hit Wednesday. The show was viewed for over five billion minutes just two weeks after its premiere, smashing streaming records. The duo partnered with iconic director Tim Burton to bring the series to life. The show focuses on the teenage years of Wednesday Addams and stars Jenna Ortega. With over 250 million views worldwide, Wednesday has become Netflix’s number one English language series of all time.
Millar and Gough also created and served as showrunners of the critically acclaimed action-adventure television series Smallville. The show became the longest-running comic book-based series of all time and was the number one show in the history of the WB Television Network. They also created and executive produced AMC’s groundbreaking martial arts drama Into the Badlands, as well as MTV’s The Shannara Chronicles, starring Austin Butler.
Their feature film credits include Sam Raimi’s blockbuster Spider-Man 2, starring Tobey Maguire; the hit action-comedy Shanghai Noon and its sequel Shanghai Knights, both starring Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson; as well as Lethal Weapon 4, starring Mel Gibson and Danny Glover; and the global smash The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. The duo also produced the hit film Hannah Montana: The Movie, starring Miley Cyrus, which marked the first film produced under the Millar Gough Ink banner. Most recently, they collaborated with Tim Burton on the sequel to his classic film Beetlejuice, starring Michael Keaton, Winona Rider, Catherine O’Hara and Jenna Ortega.
SETH GRAHAME-SMITH (Story by) is a screenwriter, producer and New York Times bestselling author, who’s proud to have worked with Tim Burton on three films to date. As a writer and producer, Seth’s films have grossed more than two billion dollars at the box office, ranging from family fare like The Lego Batman Movie, to the highest-grossing horror movie of all time, Stephen King’s It. As an author, Seth is credited with creating the ‘mash-up’ literary genre with his bestselling novels Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, both of which were adapted into feature films. Along with his producing partner, David Katzenberg, Seth is the co-founder of KatzSmith Productions, a film and television company dedicated to telling elevated genre stories.
