The 81st edition of the Venice Film Festival kicked off in Hollywood fashion with the world premiere of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” Wednesday evening on the Lido.
To make the sequel, Tim Burton reunited with several key cast members from his 1988 horror-comedy, including Michael Keaton playing the titular ghoul, Catherine O’Hara, and Winona Ryder as Lydia, now mother to her own sullen teen played by Jenna Ortega.
“I’m not out to do a big sequel for money,” Burton said a few hours before the premiere, with his cast alongside him. “I wanted to make this for very personal reasons.”
The reason, he said, was that he’d become disillusioned with the film industry in the past few years. “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” was the kick he needed to fall in love with the process again.
“I just realized if I’m going to do anything again, I just wanted to do it from my heart. Something that I wanted to do,” Burton said. “It’s a bit like the Lydia character. Sometimes your life takes a little bit of a turn, you go down a different path. I sort of lost myself a little bit.”
The film comes 36 years after audiences first met the Deetz family. Though the original “Beetlejuice” was a hit, the tenth highest grossing film of 1988, and remains a beloved staple, Burton said he never quite understood why it was such a success. In fact, he didn’t even watch it to prepare to make this one. He remembered the spirit well enough.
“There are so few opportunities to be in something that you can say is 100% original and unique,” said Keaton, who joked about his character’s evolution.
“I think my character has matured,” Keaton said. “As suave and sensitive as he was in the first, I think he’s even more so in this one.”
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” which Warner Bros. opens in theaters worldwide next week, may be a major Hollywood studio release, but it was made with a scrappy and improvisational energy which extended from the cast to the crew, who were often building puppets on the spot.