LAS VEGAS – His Beetlejuice character is notoriously off-putting, and Michael Keaton is very good at setting himself apart.
When director Tim Burton and his Beetlejuice co-stars attended a presentation Tuesday at CinemaCon to chat about their film, Keaton wore a brown jacket and white pants while everyone else wore black — or as Burton said, “It's like attending our funeral.” And like Beetlejuice, Keaton is quick to react to enthusiasm: “I didn't get the memo. I look happy.”
Burton came to the theater owners' convention with an extended trailer for “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (in theaters Sept. 6), the long-awaited sequel to the original 1988 supernatural comedy starring Keaton as “the most diabolical ghost.” The Dietz family, including Lydia (Winona Ryder) and her mother Delia (Catherine O'Hara), return to their home in Winter River after the death of a family member, and Lydia's rebellious teenage daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), finds a model of the city in an attic that was home to a certain threat. Green haired.
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice”:A new trailer shows the return of Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder
Cue Beetlejuice, who has returned to cause all kinds of mayhem and mayhem in the real world and the afterlife. New footage leans into the sequel's plot, which revolves around the living and the dead needing to figure out how to coexist, and also showed off the shrunken-headed guy from the first film, Beetlejuice reconnecting with Lydia, and a first look at the creepy Willem Dafoe. Wolf Jackson and Monica Bellucci gothic villain Delores.
Burton joked that having Bellucci in the film “fulfilled my lifelong dream of making an Italian horror film.” The actress said she loved all the “beautiful sets and stunning costumes. For a moment, I really felt like a soul-sucking villain.”
exclaimed Keaton to new cast member Ortega, who couldn't make it to Vegas due to her production schedule. “She just got it. She's like, 'I know what the tone is.' It was perfect,” Keaton said.
And fellow original star O'Hara is glad people will stop asking her for a sequel like they have for the past 30 years. “It was a pleasure taking the call from Tim. The characters have evolved – not Beetlejuice, but the rest of us.”
The sequel has been a long-term project for Keaton and Burton, who describe it as a “weird family reunion.” Every few years or so, “we would throw the idea around,” Keaton said. “The first one was fun because Tim and I were figuring it out. We were going crazy. And to do it again, I was really nervous to see us pull it off again.”
Did they do that? “It's a really good (expletive),” Keaton said in his signature Beetlejuice growl that thrilled the audience. “Actually, it's great.”
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