The 81st Venice Film Festival is off to a delightfully brutal start. Beetlejuice BeetlejuiceTim Burton’s much-anticipated horror-comedy sequel “The Horror-Comedy Sequel” had its first press screening to a sold-out audience on Wednesday morning as the opening film of the glamorous Italian film festival.
Burton and his stellar cast – including returning stars Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder, as well as Catherine O’Hara and newcomers Jenna Ortega, Willem DeFoe, Justin Theroux Si and Monica Bellucci – then flocked to the Venice press room for the first panel discussion about the production.
“One of my favorite parts is looking into your eyes again,” Ryder told Keaton when asked what it was like to be reunited 36 years after making the original. Beetlejuice. She said the atmosphere on the set of the sequel was very similar to what she felt when she was 16 and filming the first film with Burton and Keaton in 1988.
“I have such a deep love and trust for Tim, and a sense of playfulness and willingness to experiment,” she explains. “You feel safe in the nonsense, but you also feel completely free.”
Summing up the entire journey of returning for the sequel, she said, “It’s been one of the most special experiences of my life.”
An Italian reporter noted the “feeling of happiness” in the air at the morning news screening and asked Keaton how he handled the character’s aging and evolution more than thirty years later.
“I think it’s clear that my character has matured,” he deadpans, flashing his trademark eccentric grin. “Even though he was suave and sensitive in the first film, I think he’s even more so in this one. Just his generally caring nature, his sense of social ethics and his political correctness.
Burton added: “When people ask how the character of Beetlejuice has evolved, we just start laughing.”
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice The story follows Lydia Dietz (Ryder) and her family as they return to the iconic haunted house after a tragedy, then when her daughter Astrid (Ortega) opens the door to a beetle They have to deal with the consequences when Juice resides at the gate of the afterlife. A trailer for the film debuted in March, with Keaton declaring to a surprised Ryder: “The juice’s gone.”
Theroux says Beetlejuice “It just feels like it’s in our cultural DNA,” and joining the franchise feels like “being handed the keys to Willy Wonka’s house or something.” He admitted that the project seemed “a little intimidating” at first, but when he stepped onto the film’s “beautiful set,” “it felt like so much fun — kind of like walking into a church and playing basketball.”
He added that the project, although being produced by Warner Bros., feels more like an independent film without the “normal downward pressure of a studio film.”
Willem Dafoe said he had admired Burton’s work for decades and was delighted to get the call about the project, and later made it his mission to make the director laugh on set. He added that it was “actually easy” because Burton was quick to laugh.
‘s first comment Beetlejuice Beetlejuice After Burton and the cast walked the red carpet for the world premiere at Venice’s Sala Grande cinema, the film won’t be released in Italy until later in the day. Warner Bros. may be optimistic about the film’s commercial prospects, though, as the latest tracking shows that the film will debut with a whopping $80 million at the North American box office when it opens on September 6, making it its biggest September debut ever , not adjusted for inflation.
Tim Burton and the stars of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Vittorio Zunino Cerlotto/Courtesy of Getty Images
