This year was the year Warner Bros. greenlighted some ideas that a-listers had really been kicking around for years. Both Tim Burton’s sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Kevin Cosner’s western saga Horizon had been ideas the two directors had been kicking around for about 35 years, and both are coming to theaters in 2024. As part of the upcoming 2024 movies slate Warner Bros. presented at CinemaCon, we got to hear from all the Beetlejuice OGs about their journey to this project, and Michael Keaton also had one big takeaway for the fans.
Speaking to a packed crowd at Caesar’s Palace, Warner Bros. touted out none other than Tim Burton, Catherine O’Hara, Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Willem Dafoe and Michael Keaton himself. It was a crowded stage, and Winona Ryder and Jenna Ortega weren’t even there. Part of the reason the movie was probably able to land such great talent is the fact that A. most of but not all the Beetlejuice OG’s came back but also B. the movie has lived on in the pop culture vernacular and is amongst Burton’s most-loved films, so it makes sense a-listers – or as Burton noted “Academy Award winners” – were interested.
Keaton’s actually already seen what's done of the film in all its glory and here’s the message he wanted to impart on the fans, f-bomb and all.
I can tell you this though, ‘It’s really fucking good.'
Keaton's been enthusiastic about Beetlejuice 2 a lot already, and why not? The sequel is also a project Burton and Michael Keaton had been bandying about for years. Keaton was pretty candid about the idea of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice ultimately getting greenlighted and it sounds like a second movie was always something he and Burton would casually talk about; however, there were roadblocks for a long time. You wouldn't have known it from the attention to detail and care in the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice trailer, but it took a while for an idea to form, and Keaton talked about how easy it is for time to pass before you return to a legacy project in Hollywood.
Truthfully, he and I over the years would kind of kick the notion around. A year or two would pass or three and five years, you know, we would kind of discuss it and discuss it, and finally the timing was right… it’s kind of a tough thing to write.
Tim Burton admitted it actually took the decades that have passed for him to latch onto a Beetlejuice 2 idea that would work, but his “eureka” moment sounds like it came when he realized he could revisit a “weird teenager” character again and make that a focal point in the new movie. Per Burton:
[Jokes] Well, it only took 35 years to find something I liked. I started thinking about it in the sense of: First, I really identified with the Lydia character kind of being a weird teenager… you get to see three generations of Deetz women… and you use those experiences of getting older, those strange journeys your life takes you on. With Michael, Catherine and Winona it was a weird reunion.
Other franchise OG Catherine O’Hara also humorously noted “for the last 30 years at least” she’d been “asked over and over again” if the movie was being made. She joked she thought for a while that the movie was just being made without her, leading to the interview questions, but on a candid note she was please to really be asked back when Burton decided to make it happen.
But again, the big note that I think the cast wanted to impart on everyone attending is that they think the movie is just great. It’s not finished, as Burton revealed he has to go back to London tomorrow for more work, but if there’s one thing Keaton would like to impart on any audiences even casually interested in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, it’s this bullish final note: “The last cast was great, this cast is so good, everyone's so frigging funny… really it’s true.”
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice hits theaters on September 6th, 2024. CinemaBlend's full coverage of Warner Bros. 2024 CinemaCon panel is also available for a full perusal of the studio's slate.
