Tim Burton explains how Netflix's Wednesday inspired him to make Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Aug. 12, 2024Exclusive: The director also tells Total Film about how Winona Ryder’s Lydia Deetz is the sequel’s “emotional hook”
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Tim Burton was pretty sure he was done making movies until he directed the first four episodes of Netflix hit Wednesday. The hugely popular supernatural show didn’t just help him out of a rut, either, it directly inspired him to makeBeetlejuice Beetlejuice, the follow-up to his 1988 cult classic.
“I went off to Romania for nine months, and had time to wander the Carpathian Mountains and think about things,” he tellsTotal Film in our new issue, which hits newsstands on Thursday, August 15 and features the Ghost with the Most on the cover.
“Wednesday reconnected me to why I like making things. It was like shooting a movie on a TV schedule. It was quick. It was invigorating,” Burton continues. “We were not out to make a sequel. This was before franchises were talked about. The first time I ever heard that word, by the way, was on Batman Returns. I remember first hearing it and I just got a cold chill down my spine.”
In between takes on Wednesday, the filmmaker started thinking about how much his life had changed since he first started in the biz, which prompted him to think about Beetlejuice’s Lydia Deetz, who was brought to life by a 15-year-old Winona Ryder way back when, and how she might have turned out.
“There was something emotional that made me want to do it. There was something about [that] character, and what happens to people 35 years later. That was the emotional hook to me,” Burton explains. “What happens to people, once you get older? You go through different things. You have kids. It changes you. Now, I understand this stuff a bit better. I’ve been through it myself.”
As it stands, there’s very little that’s been revealed in the way of Beetlejuice 2’s plot, but we do know that Ryder’s grown-up, spiky-fringed goth is now the host of a spooky TV series called ‘Ghost House with Lydia Deetz’ – a skin-crawling update in the eyes of her sceptic teen daughter Astrid (Wednesday Addams herself Jenna Ortega). That, and the death of Jeffrey Jones' Charles Deetz brings the family back to the location of the first flick, Winter River, Connecticut, and subsequently leads to the reawakening of Keaton’s green-haired ghoul.
“Jenna, oh my God, I’m absolutely in love with her!” says Ryder of her heir apparent. “She is such a magnificent presence and person, and she’s endlessly fascinating with a huge heart. We first met at Tim’s house – Wednesday had just come out. I know what an overwhelming feeling it is to be in a show that suddenly takes off. So, I just gave her a big hug and I felt instantly maternal towards her. I felt a lot like I was seeing a younger version of myself, only like she’s a hundred times cooler.”
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Beetlejuice Beetlejuice releases on September 6. You can read more about it, and a whole lot more besides, in the new issue of Total Film when it hits shelves and digital newsstands on Thursday, August 15.
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I am an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering all things TV and film across our Total Film and SFX sections. Elsewhere, my words have been published by the likes of Digital Spy, SciFiNow, PinkNews, FANDOM, Radio Times, and Total Film magazine.
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