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Featured Story, Movies

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” Scares Up Standing Ovation & Rapturous Reception at Venice Film Festival

August 29, 2024
By The Credits

Talk about a riveting return from the grave.

Twenty-six years after Tim Burton and Michael Keaton delivered their roguishly charming 1988 horror comedy, the dynamic duo, along with other original Beetlejuice stars Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara, were on hand in Venice to unveil their long-awaited sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. The wait was worth it.

VENICE, ITALY – AUGUST 28: Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci Justin Theroux, Catherine O’Hara, Winona Ryder, Tim Burton, Michael Keaton and Jenna Ortega attend a photocall for the movie “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” during the 81st Venice International Film Festival at on August 28, 2024 in Venice, Italy. (Photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)

Burton and his cast were welcomed to Venice with a boisterous standing ovation in Venice before their film’s world premiere on Wednesday night. Burton, Keaton, Ryder, O’Hara, and newcomers Jenna Ortega, Monica Bellucci, Justin Theroux, and Willem Dafoe were on hand.

Beetlejuice became a cult classic, another Burton stunner that was one of the films that defined 1980s cinema. Getting the gang back together for a reunion was so sweet, they had to name it twice. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice finds Keaton returning to the trickster spirit he inhabited, once again unleashing his debauched ghoul-ery on Winona Ryder’s Lydia Deetz and Catherine O’Hara’s Delia Deetz now that the Deetz’s have returned to Winter River decades later. Only there are new Deetz’s for Beetlejuice to play with—Jenna Ortega’s Astrid Deetz, Lydia’s daughter, is forced to learn the hard way about her mother and grandmother’s very agile and talkative skeleton in the closet. 

The Deetz family has returned to Winter River following a tragedy. Lydia is still haunted by her experience with Beetlejuice two decades ago, but like she was as a teen, the rebellious Astrid discovers the mysterious model of the town in the attic and is prepared to follow in her mother’s footsteps and conjure the trickster demon’s spirit from the underworld.

The critics seem as delighted as the Venice crowd was. “Tim Burton is great again! His latest, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice isn’t just a nostalgic retread — it’s a jolting reminder of what makes the director so darkly seductive,” writes New York Magazine. “Michael Keaton seems to have more energy than he did 35 years ago, bouncing off the purgatorial walls with hilarious gusto,” writes Empire Magazine.

Burton directs from a screenplay by Alfred Gough & Miles Millar (Wednesday) and a story by Gough & Millar and Seth Grahame-Smith, based on characters created by Michael McDowell and Larry Wilson. Burton’s creative team includes longtime collaborators like four-time Oscar nominee composer Danny Elfman, who worked on the original Beetlejuice and a slew of other Burton classics like Scrooged (1988) and Batman (1989), and four-time Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood, whose work with Burton includes Edward Scissorhands (1990) Sleepy Hollow, (1999) Sweeney Todd (2007), and Alice in Wonderland (2010), which won her one of her Oscars. Burton also deployed members of his Wednesday team, like production designer Mark Scruton and editor Jay Prychidny, as well as creature effects and special makeup FX creative supervisor Neal Scanlan. Hair and makeup designer Christine Blundell gave Beetlejuice his signature dead-but-lively looks.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice haunts theaters on September 6.

Featured image: Caption: MICHAEL KEATON as Beetlejuice in Warner Bros. Pictures’ comedy, “BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Parisa Taghizadeh

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The Credits

The Credits is an online magazine that tells the story behind the story to celebrate our large and diverse creative community. Focusing on profiles of below-the-line filmmakers, The Credits celebrates the often uncelebrated individuals who are indispensable to the films and TV shows we love.