Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a 2024 American dark fantasy comedy horror film directed by Tim Burton from a screenplay by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. A sequel to Beetlejuice (1988) and the second film of the Beetlejuice franchise, the film stars Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Catherine O'Hara reprising their roles alongside new cast members Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Jenna Ortega, and Willem Dafoe. Set more than three decades after the first Beetlejuice, it follows Lydia Deetz, now a mother, struggling to keep her family together in the wake of a loss as the specter Betelgeuse[a] returns to haunt her.
After the success of Beetlejuice, plans for a sequel were announced by The Geffen Film Company, its original producers. Little materialized until 2011 when Warner Bros. Pictures hired Seth Grahame-Smith to pitch a story, which went through numerous revisions before being shelved in late 2019. Plans for a sequel were revived in early 2022, with Burton set to co-produce with Brad Pitt's studio Plan B Entertainment. After the casting process finished in early 2023, principal photography, supervised by cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos, took place in parts of England and the U.S. from May to November, despite being suspended for four months due to the 2023 actors' strike. The official title was revealed in February 2024. During post-production, editing was handled by Jay Prychidny and the musical score was composed by longtime Burton collaborator Danny Elfman.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice opened the 81st Venice International Film Festival on August 28, 2024,[6] and was theatrically released overseas on September 4, 2024, and in the United States by Warner Bros. Pictures two days later. The film has received generally positive reviews from critics and has grossed $284 million worldwide on a $99–100 million budget.
Plot
[edit]In 2024, Lydia Deetz is the host of a supernatural talk show called Ghost House, and she is estranged from her daughter Astrid after her husband, Richard, died in the Amazon. During one of her episodes, Lydia hallucinates seeing Beetlejuice, the ghost who tried to marry her thirty-six years earlier,[b] in the audience.
After learning from her stepmother, Delia, that her father, Charles, has died from a plane crash at sea, the family gathers in Winter River, Connecticut, to bury Charles. At the wake, Rory, her talk show's producer and boyfriend, proposes to Lydia and pressures her to accept and marry him on Halloween, and she hesitantly accepts. Astrid bikes through town and meets a boy named Jeremy, who she becomes close with, and he invites her to spend Halloween with him.
In the afterlife, Beetlejuice now oversees an office of "bio-exorcists" and still lusts for Lydia. His ex-wife, Delores, escapes from captivity and goes on a killing spree, draining the souls of the dead. Ghost detective Wolf Jackson warns him of this, and Beetlejuice explains to his co-workers that they met during the Black Plague, but Delores was a cult member who poisoned him as part of an immortality ritual; he murdered her before he succumbed.
Astrid discovers, to her shock, that she has inherited her mother's powers and that Jeremy is a ghost; he asks her to come to the afterlife with him to help him regain his life in exchange for meeting her father's spirit. Lydia learns from a realtor that Jeremy was a murderer who killed his own parents twenty-three years ago and died falling out of his treehouse when the police tried to arrest him. Lydia reluctantly summons Beetlejuice and signs a contract agreeing to marry him if he takes her to the afterlife to save Astrid. When Wolf is notified of Beetlejuice bringing a member of the living into the afterlife, a manhunt for him begins.
Beetlejuice and Lydia search for Astrid, who is being shown through the afterlife bureaucracy with Jeremy. He admits that he has tricked Astrid into exchanging her life for his, and Astrid is taken to the "Soul Train" to be sent to the Great Beyond. However, Astrid's father Richard is working nearby and follows her. Lydia pulls Astrid off the Soul Train and they escape through a portal to Saturn's moon Titan, where Richard saves them from a sandworm and brings them back to the offices. While Beetlejuice sends Jeremy to Hell, Richard shows Lydia and Astrid how to return to the living world. Meanwhile, Delia performs a ceremony in mourning for Charles and is bitten by two venomous snakes which she had been assured were defanged. She arrives in the afterlife and summons Beetlejuice to help her find Charles; he agrees if Delia will help him find Lydia.
Lydia and Astrid arrive at the church where Rory is waiting to marry her. Beetlejuice crashes the wedding with Delia and uses a "truth serum" to force Rory to admit that he is only using Lydia for her money. Beetlejuice then dresses himself and Lydia in formal clothes and prepares to marry her, when Delores arrives seeking revenge. Astrid opens a portal to summon the sandworm from Titan and Beetlejuice leads it to devour Delores and Rory.
Wolf arrives but Beetlejuice freezes him and his comrades in order to avoid arrest and continue the ceremony. Before he can complete the ceremony, Astrid reveals that due to the fact that Beetlejuice illegally brought Lydia into the afterlife, their marriage contract is void. Lydia recites Beetlejuice's name three times and banishes him back to the afterlife. Delia returns to the afterlife with Wolf. She is reunited with Charles' spirit as he is about to board the Soul Train to the Great Beyond.
As everything returns to normal, Lydia ends her Ghost House show in favor of spending more time with her daughter. Despite this, Lydia continues to have nightmares about Beetlejuice, including a dream where Astrid gives birth to Beetlejuice's child. After waking up from a false awakening, Lydia realizes that Beetlejuice will not give up on pursuing her.
Cast
[edit]
- Michael Keaton as Betelgeuse (pronounced "Beetlejuice"), an afterlife ghost and "bio-exorcist" who wants to marry someone from the realm of the living. Both Keaton and director Tim Burton opted to keep the character as politically incorrect as he was in the original film due to their love for that character trait, with Burton deeming Betelgeuse as a character whose whole point is that he does not undergo any character arc or development, never evolving.[7]
- Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz, the former gothic teenager who was almost forced to marry Betelgeuse, now mother of Astrid Deetz and hostess of the Ghost House with Lydia Deetz show. Ryder initially imagined her character would live as a spinster in the Maitland residence's attic, but appreciated the development of her character, particularly around her relationship with daughter Astrid.[8]
- Catherine O'Hara as Delia Deetz, Lydia's stepmother, Astrid's stepgrandmother and Charles Deetz's widow, now the hostess of a real art show located in a Soho gallery.[8]
- Jenna Ortega as Astrid Deetz, Lydia's teenage daughter and Delia's step-granddaughter.[9][10][11]
- Justin Theroux as Rory, Lydia's current boyfriend and a television producer.[8][12] Rory was inspired by Otho, Delia Deetz's interior design and exorcist friend played by Glenn Shadix in the original film. Writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar devised him as a character who everyone wanted to see getting his comeuppance, like Otho, and enjoying the idea of Lydia being in a weird codependent relationship which everyone sees that way, herself included. Gough and Millar wanted the audience to understand why Rory is with Lydia and that he was a "schmuck", but they felt that they needed to find Rory's humanity without him being a mere punchline. Once Theroux was cast and connected with the writers over Zoom, he provided Gough and Millar with ideas they incorporated.[13]
- Monica Bellucci as Delores, Betelgeuse's ex-wife who, in life, was a mysterious soul-sucking witch who poisoned Betelgeuse several centuries earlier during the Black Plague before he killed her with an axe in retaliation.
- Willem Dafoe as Wolf Jackson, a ghost detective who, in life, was a B movie action star.[14]
- Arthur Conti as Jeremy Frazier, an undead teenage murderer who is Astrid's brief love interest.[15][16]
- Santiago Cabrera as Richard, Astrid's late father and Lydia's former husband who disappeared in Brazil's Amazonas.
- Burn Gorman as Father Damien, a reverend in Winter River.[17]
- Amy Nuttall as local real estate agent Jane Butterfield Jr., the daughter of the first film's Jane Butterfield Sr., portrayed in the previous film by Rachel Mittelman.
- Danny DeVito as an afterlife janitor who died at the hands of Delores.
- Nick Kellington as Bob, a zombie considered a "shrinker" who resides in the Neitherland.
- Mark Heenhan (physical) and Charlie Hopkinson (voice) as Charles Deetz, Lydia's father and Delia's deceased husband who was decapitated by a shark, hence why he goes to the afterlife without his upper half. The character is depicted with the likeness of original actor Jeffrey Jones through various means, including archival photos, paintings and an animated stop-motion sequence that describes the character's death.[18][19][20] The character's death was inspired by a nightmare of Burton's about his own death.[21]
Jane Leaney and David Ayres portray Mrs. and Mr. Frazier, Jeremy's murdered parents. Georgina Beedle portrays Janet, Wolf Jackson's secretary who "keeps him real", while Filipe Cates portrays Vlad, a young man dressed as a vampire who marries Astrid in Lydia's dream.
Production
[edit]Development
[edit]After the success of Beetlejuice (1988), a sequel was fast-tracked by The Geffen Film Company. Two Beetlejuice sequel scripts were commissioned in 1990: the first, Beetlejuice in Love, was penned by screenwriter Warren Skaaren, who did a heavy re-write on the first film's script. In Skaaren's sequel, Betelgeuse meets Leo, who tragically plummets to his death while proposing to his girlfriend, Julia, on the Eiffel Tower. When Leo enters the afterlife, Betelgeuse escapes to the world of the livi