The long 36-year wait forTim Burtonto get things together for a sequel to 1986’sBeetlejuicehas been worth it for many fans, and has already broken a career-best record for the director to boot. After scoring highly with critics and managing to avoid disappointing long-term fans,Beetlejuice Beetlejuicehas also given Burton the biggest opening day gross of his career – beating even his eventual $1 billion-earnerAlice in Wonderland.
According toVariety, thesequel followed up its $13 million previews with a huge $41.5 million Friday haul, not only making it Burton’s personal best opening day, but also falling in just behind the $50.4 million haul of 2017’sItto land it a place as the second-highest September opening of all time. Not bad for a movie that spent many years in development hell and seemed destined to be one of the great “what if” movies of Hollywood.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is the sequel to the original Tim Burton classic that starred Michael Keaton and Wynona Rider in a horror-comedy that involved ghosts trying to scare off new homebuyers from taking their house. The sequel brings back Michael Keaton as the hilarious and sleazy ghost with selfish intentions, now joined by Jenna Ortega in a new role.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuiceis now set to be one of the mostsuccessful legacy sequelsof the last several years, and will easily surpass the likes ofIndiana Jones and the Dial of Destinyand twoGhostbusterssequels, including this year’sFrozen Empire. The film’s success is also a perfect example of a movie that was made at the right time, only when everything was in place to make it happen. While discussions about a sequel have been ongoing for years, withWinona Ryder originally boarding the potential sequel almost a decade ago, Burton himself believes that he could not have made the movie until now. Speaking withSlashFilm, Burton explained that it was Ryder’s character of Lydia that was the key to bringing Beetlejuice back to screens again.
“Well, what happened to this person 35 years later? It’s a bit, like 35 up. You go from cool teenager to what? Some kind of f**ked up adult or whatever. And what relationships do you have? Whether you have kids? What’s your relationship with that? So it’s not something I could have done back then.
It’s only something you could do once you’d experienced those things yourself. So for me, this became a very personal movie, like kind of a weird family movie, about a weird family, or a weird family movie, or I don’t know which way you want to look at it.”
While it is common for the success of a movie to lead studio bosses to instantly seek out a potential sequel, the idea ofBeetlejuice Beetlejuicebirthing “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is something that Burton doesn’t expect to see considering how long it took to make the second movie. During the London premiere of the movie, Burton joked:
Well, if [the same] time frame goes on, I’ll be about 100. So maybe. I doubt it.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Review: Talented Leads Propel a Satisfactory Sequel
Lydia (Winona Ryder), Astrid (Jenna Ortega), and Delia (Catherine O’Hara) encounter Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) at her father’s funeral.
Although the initial reaction from many fans will be to want more Beetlejuice in their lives, there have been many franchises that have gone from huge highs to terrible lows by rushing out more sequels. Burton himself knows this all too well from his time working on Disney’sAlice Through the Looking Glass, which didn’t fare well compared to its predecessor. Having avoided the pitfalls that come with reviving a long-dormant franchise for a new generation, it would be foolish to undo all that with a rushed-out threequel.
