Tim Burton’s ‘Beetlejuice’ sequel: A fresh take on a cult classic
Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers for “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” now playing in theaters.
A surprising pitch from Tim Burton
When Tim Burton approached “Wednesday” writers Al Gough and Miles Millar after a long day of filming in Romania, they feared the worst. Typically, Burton would leave the set immediately after wrap, so this unexpected meeting had them worried.
“After wrap, he usually was in his car and gone,” Gough recalls. “So we first thought there was something wrong: ‘Oh shit, what happened?’”
Instead, Burton had an exciting proposition: he wanted them to pen the sequel to his beloved 1988 supernatural fantasy film, “Beetlejuice.” Gough and Millar eagerly accepted and began collaborating with Burton to develop the story.
Crafting a meaningful sequel
“We’ve done a lot of sequels, and it’s always about figuring out why the sequel should exist,” Millar explains. “Why is this a movie, rather than just a piece of commerce because we can make a lot of money as a studio. You have to feel an integrity and say something.”
The duo had previously succeeded with sequels, notably writing the critically acclaimed “Spider-Man 2” in 2004. For “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” the key was balancing social satire with the sincerity of the original.
A focus on the Deetz women
The new film centers on three generations of Deetz women: Delia (Catherine O’Hara), Lydia (Winona Ryder), and Astrid (Jenna Ortega). “I was just thinking, it’s actually about those women and the terrible men in their lives, right? Beetlejuice with Lydia, Jeremy (Arthur Conti) with Astrid, and Rory (Justin Theroux) with Lydia, too,” Gough says.
“The first movie said something about the culture of the time: Yuppies move to the country! It’s like a gentrification movie in many ways,” Millar adds. In the 2024 update, Theroux’s character Rory uses modern therapy-speak to manipulate those around him.
Avoiding a rehash of the original
Gough and Millar were determined not to simply rehash the original film. This decision led to the absence of ghost couple Adam and Barbara Maitland (Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis) from the sequel. “Tim had said upfront that he didn’t want the Maitlands in it. I think part of it is that they’re ghosts, so they wouldn’t age,” Gough explains. “We had one moment where we tried it, but it just honestly felt like fan service. That story had been told.”
Jenna Ortega’s unique character
While Gough, Millar, and Burton had recently worked with Ortega on “Wednesday,” her character in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is quite different from the macabre “Addams Family” icon. “We didn’t want to make her Wednesday, and we didn’t want her to feel like a clone of Winona,” Gough says. “Winona’s character when she was a teenager … was open to strangeness and weird things. Astrid says, ‘I believe in what I can see: facts and science. She has a bit of a bleeding heart for her causes, but one of those causes is not her mother.”
A zany dance sequence
By the end of the film, Astrid comes to understand her mother, culminating in a zany dance sequence that showcases their newfound bond. Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O” makes an appearance early in the film, harkening back to the memorable dinner party scene from the original film. Millar and Gough knew they wanted to create a similar musical scene in the sequel but felt immense pressure to live up to their predecessor.
The climactic wedding scene
The answer came during the film’s climax when Beetlejuice crashes Lydia’s wedding to Rory, demanding she fulfills her end of the marriage contract she signed earlier in the film. The first film’s wedding scene, while fondly remembered by fans, is actually a blink-and-you-miss-it moment.
“It’s like five seconds, and then Geena Davis comes in riding the sandworm, and he’s done,” Gough says. “With the second chance to have a wedding, what’s he gonna do?”
Cue the music. “We got to the end of the movie and we all wanted a musical number in it, but we couldn’t land on anything,” Gough recalls. “Tim called us and said he has a jukebox in his kitchen. ‘I’ve been listening to the song “MacArthur Park.” What if we use that as the central song in the wedding sequence?'”
A theatrical musical number
Using the original 1968 Richard Harris version of “MacArthur Park,” the team created a theatrical musical number featuring Lydia, Beetlejuice, Astrid, Rory, and even the priest. “It’s a seven-and-a-half minute song. So at first, we’re like, maybe these sections we don’t need? And Tim’s like, ‘Nah, we’re gonna use all of it,'” Gough says. “It’s the kind of bonkers thing the movie needed. Once we sort of had the story down and the structures, you could then take those big swings, and they felt like they fit into the movie. It was so ‘Beetlejuice.’ When you sit down in the movie and the million ways you think it’s going to end, I don’t think ‘MacArthur Park’ would ever be on your bingo card.”
Incorporating more characters
The sequence’s length allowed the creative team to incorporate even more characters into the song. “I particularly love the moment when the song completely shifts gears, and [Willem] Dafoe comes out of the crypt in the bonkers ’70s orchestral rift in the middle of the song,” Millar says. “It really is incredibly theatrical as a song.”
Beetlejuice’s backstory
While the wedding is one of the film’s most exciting moments, it’s not the only time we see Beetlejuice partaking in a marriage ceremony. Earlier in the movie, his backstory is revealed as the audience watches him wed the terrifying Delores (Monica Bellucci). It’s the first time audiences get to see a young Beetlejuice, as he robs graves hundreds of years in the past, in a black-and-white sequence narrated entirely in Italian.
“We knew he was old, so we were like, ‘Oh, that’s the era he would exist in,” Gough says. “It was actually Tim’s idea to be like, ‘Let’s do it all in Italian!”
“I think he said it’s like the prologue to a Fellini movie,” Millar adds with a laugh.
Limited screentime for Beetlejuice
Despite fleshing out their “agent of chaos,” the creative team was adamant about maintaining Beetlejuice’s limited screentime. Keaton only appears for 17 minutes in the 1988 film, and the sequel isn’t much different in that respect.
“He’s such a fun character to write, but … he’s not the protagonist of the movie,” Millar says. “It was tricky in terms of keeping the right balance. People love him so much. It’s called ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ for a reason, so he needs to be essential to the movie.”
Gough and Millar say that challenge helped inform their writing, culminating in a script they’re proud of (with just enough Beetlejuice). “It makes you think harder about what those scenes are going to be, and what his contribution to the movie is,” Millar says. “It feels incredibly satisfying, and like you’ve spent a lot more time with him than you think. That’s the magic trick of that character.”
For more details and to watch the trailer, visit Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.