The first “Beetlejuice” movie touched the lives of horror fans around the world, engraving itself as a cult classic in the film industry. Then in 2019, the movie was adapted into a Broadway play where it ran for four years. But the juice is loose once again as Tim Burton and Warner Bros. try their hand at a sequel.
In his return to the screen following his 2019 live action Dumbo movie, which premiered as a major flop, Burton draws together a cast full of experienced horror actors to revive a classic. Thus, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”was born, the kind of name that makes fans fear for the possibility of a trilogy.
The sequel begins with the untimely death of Jeffrey Jones’ character from the first film, Charles Deetz, on his way home from a bird watching expedition. The film weaves him a few times throughout as a dead man without a head, having lost it to a shark: a useful trick to cut out Jones from the movie because of his run-ins with the law beginning in the early 2000s.
For the funeral, Winona Ryder, still as Lydia Deetz, is called to action with her daughter, mother and boyfriend in the house where the whole first movie was set and where Michael Keaton, still as Betelgeuse, will be waiting to make his debut.
The first “Beetlejuice” movie includes various scenes of possessive singing and dancing to showcase its quirky overtone and ensure that no one is taking the movie more seriously than they should. Burton masterfully recreates this, though with slight stray from the strictly Harry Belafonte playlist that the first movie followed.
Incorporating more modern love songs through poorly timed lip syncing numbers and overly-extravagant dance moves, native only to an inflatable car salesman, Burton captures the nostalgia of his own piece from 36 years prior.
As it is with generally all sequels to a classically appraised first work, the risk of tainting the reputation of the franchise with the second movie runs high. This sequel proved no different. At one point during the production of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”, the movie was nearly scrapped.
According to the Indie Wire, Warner Bros had originally planned for the sequel to be a streaming-only release, where instead of theaters, as it had been with the first “Beetlejuice,” fans would experience the movie for the first time within their own home. Burton rejected this possibility and, through negotiations, was cleared to release the movie in theaters as long as the budget of the film stayed under $100 million.
In only a way that Tim Burton would, he cut down the budget by $50 million to put it just below the $100 million mark and solidify Betelgeuse’s return. Burton and fellow cast members had to sacrifice money upfront and accept percentages of the box-office gross instead, a choice that would eventually pay off.
According to Variety, the movie was estimated to net just around as much as the budget behind it. However, just two weeks after the movie’s release, the box office numbers doubled that original expectation, likely paying off big time for all cast members who agreed to take the back-end deals.
The movie concluded in a very ominous foreboding fashion, leaving the door very much open for a threequel. A possibility that, judging from the fairing of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” so far, could be in motion very soon.
As Dostevsky would say, “later reader.”