How Wednesday's Series Brought Beetlejuice 2 Back to Life

Tim Burton had long wanted to make a sequel with Michael Keaton, and it was thanks to Jenna Ortega that he finally got the idea.

We learned this week that at the very end of summer, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice to open 2024 Venice Film Festival. This is perfect timing, Tim Burton and his entire team are on the cover of First. Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder and Catherine O'Hara will soon be back 36 years after the first opus, with Monica Bellucci, Jenna Ortega and Willem Dafoe as reinforcements: they all tell us about the exceptional filming of this sequel, thought “old”with a maximum of hard sets and special effects, and this particular gothic-comic tone, which makes Beetlejuice a unique film of its kind.

Beetlejuice: Did you say cult?

Met on the set of this sequel, then interviewed again during post-production, Tim Burton opens up as rarely about his career during a long interview. Because if there was long talk of finding Beetlejuice, with ideas more outlandish than the others (“Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiianit was never very serious”he admits to us), it is on the set of Wednesday that the filmmaker has truly made this long-held dream come true. It was the two writers of the hit Netflix show, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, who co-wrote Beetlejuice Beetlejuiceand after having identified himself for so long with Lydia (the heroine of the first film played by Winona Ryder), Burton offered the lead role in this new plot to Jenna Ortegaher interpreter of Wednesday Addams.

“The idea was to rediscover the spirit of the first Beetlejuice, Tim Burton first tells us : fast shooting, lots of practical effects, puppets, stop motion animation, makeup, as many sets as possible, so as not to be swallowed up by digital and technology. We had to find the reasons why we love making movies.”

Then, when we tell him that we have “the impression that Wednesday marked a turning point in his career”the filmmaker gets carried away:

“That's true. It all started with the Covid crisis. The industry was in upheaval. I was starting to get a little tired of the world of cinema. To tell the truth, I didn't even really feel like I was part of it anymore… Let's just say that I was going through my own transformations. So I decided to go to Romania to make my first series. I have to say that I was galvanized by the urgency of a quick shoot, the very tight schedule required by the format. The fact that I identify with Wednesday Addams reaffirmed in me this need to be connected to the characters I'm talking about. It was Wednesday who brought Lydia Deetz to the surface.”

To learn more about Beetlejuice Beetlejuicego to the newsstands. The film will be released on September 11 in French theaters, and here is its trailer:

Jenna Ortega Says Filming Beetlejuice 2 Made Tim Burton “Happy”