The Venice Film Festival kicks off Wednesday with a devilish debut of Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice” sequel and a surge of star power for the glitzy competition on the sun-splashed Lido. Lady Gaga, George Clooney, Daniel Craig, Julianne Moore and Brad Pitt are among the A-listers expected in Italy’s watery city for the world’s longest-running movie festival, known as “La Mostra”. Arriving via water taxi from across the Venetian lagoon for the 10-day event, the celebrities promise to return some big-budget Hollywood pizzazz after a low-key edition last year due to the Hollywood writers’ strike.
First up is the out-of-competition world premiere of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” , featuring Michael Keaton as a chaos-causing ghoul alongside Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara and Monica Bellucci. The fantastical romp into the afterlife was a project “from my heart” for Burton, the acclaimed aficionado of the strange and ghoulish. ALSO READ: The best beauty looks from the 2018 Venice Film Festival “In the past few years I got a little bit disillusioned with the movie industry,” Burton told journalists ahead of the opening.
“For me, this movie was re-reenergising, kind of getting back to the things that I love doing, the way I love doing it, the people I love doing it with,” he said. The festival shifts tone Thursday, when eyes turn to Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas in “Maria”, Pablo Larrain’s biopic about the opera diva’s tormented life — one of 21 fi.