Michael Keaton is back as the eponymous “Ghost With the Most” in Tim Burton’s long-awaited “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” which is opening the Venice Film Festival this month before opening in theaters in September. The actor recently told GQ magazine that one of his stipulations for returning as Beetlejuice was for the sequel not to beef up his screen time. After all, the character is only on screen in the 1988 original for 17 minutes.
Beetlejuice’s popularity has only exploded since then, but that didn’t mean he wanted the character to become the star of the show in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” “The idea was, no, no, no, you can’t load it up with Beetlejuice, that’ll kill it,” Keaton said about his return. “I think the Beetlejuice character doesn’t drive the story as much as he did in the first one.
He’s more part of the storyline in this one as opposed to the first one, which is a case of, this thing comes in and drives the movie a little bit.” The “Beetlejuice” sequel reunites Keaton with Burton and original cast members Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara. Newcomers include Jenna Ortega and Willem Dafoe.
The plot centers on the strained relationship between Ryder’s Lydia Deetz and her daughter, Ortega’s Astrid. Keaton told SiriusXM in March that the mother-daughter backbone in the sequel gives it an emotional heft the original did not have. “The [original] was so fun and exciting visually.
[The sequel is] all that but really beautifu.