Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (stylized on-screen as Beetlejuice Beetlejuice: 2024 A.D.) is a 2024 American Gothic comedy horror film directed and co-produced by Tim Burton, from a screenplay by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. A sequel to Beetlejuice (1988), the film stars Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder and Catherine O'Hara reprising their roles, with Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci, Jenna Ortega and Willem Dafoe joining the cast. Set more than three decades after the first film, it follows Lydia Deetz, now a mother, struggling to keep her family together in the wake of a loss as Betelgeuse returns to haunt her.
After the success of Beetlejuice, plans for a sequel were announced by The Geffen Film Company, its original producers, and little materialized until 2011 when Warner Bros. hired Seth Grahame-Smith to pitch a story, which went through numerous revisions before being shelved in late 2019. Plans for a sequel were revived in early 2022, with Burton set to co-produce with Brad Pitt's studio Plan B Entertainment. After the casting process finished in early 2023, principal photography, supervised by cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos, took place in parts of England and the U.S. from May to November, despite being suspended for four months due to the 2023 actors' strike. The official title was revealed in February 2024. During post-production, editing was handled by Jay Prychidny and the score was composed by longtime Burton collaborator Danny Elfman.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice opened the 81st Venice International Film Festival on August 28, 2024, and was theatrically released in the United States and Canada on September 6. The film received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $452 million worldwide.
Plot
Lydia Deetz hosts a paranormal talk show called Ghost House and is estranged from her daughter Astrid, who doubts her mother's psychic abilities and that ghosts exist after her father Richard died while in the Amazon. While taping an episode, Lydia sees a vision of Betelgeuse, who tried to marry her decades prior, in the audience.
Lydia and Astrid return to Winter River after Lydia's stepmother Delia reveals that her father Charles died in a shark attack. At his funeral, Lydia's selfish boyfriend and producer, Rory, pressures her into marrying him on Halloween and she hesitantly agrees. Meanwhile, Astrid befriends local boy Jeremy Frazier, who invites her to spend the holiday with him.
In the Netherworld, Betelgeuse manages a call centre consisting of shrunken-headed employees and remains obsessed with marrying Lydia. Former actor-turned-detective Wolf Jackson informs him that his ex-wife, occultist Delores LaFerve, has resurfaced and is draining the souls of the deceased while hunting him down. The couple met during the Black Death in Italy. When Delores poisoned Betelgeuse during their honeymoon as part of an immortality ritual, he dismembered her before succumbing.
Astrid realizes she has inherited her mother's abilities and discovers that Jeremy is a ghost. He persuades her to accompany him to the Afterlife so she can see her father. After learning that Jeremy murdered his parents and is planning on using Astrid so he can live again, Lydia reluctantly summons Betelgeuse, who agrees to help on the condition that she finally marries him. Wolf discovers Betelgeuse has brought a living person into their world and launches a manhunt for him, capturing his disguised lead employee Bob, who is drained by Delores while he waits in an interrogation room.
As Betelgeuse and Lydia search for Astrid, Jeremy escorts her through the afterlife's bureaucracy, then reveals his true intent to Astrid, who is taken to the "Soul Train" to be sent to the "Great Beyond". Betelgeuse sends Jeremy to the "Fires of Damnation" while Lydia and Astrid escape with the help of Richard. During a mourning ceremony for Charles, Delia is fatally bitten by a pair of asps and arrives in the Netherworld; she summons Betelgeuse to help find Charles, agreeing in exchange for help finding Lydia.
Returning home, Astrid apologizes to Lydia for her initial disbelief. The duo arrive at the church for Lydia and Rory's wedding, but Betelgeuse crashes the ceremony with Delia. He injects Rory with "truth serum", forcing him to confess that he never believed in Lydia's abilities and is only a profiteering gold digger. As Betelgeuse takes over, Wolf and his fellow officers appear, only to be kept at bay before Delores arrives to avenge herself. With everyone else distracted, Astrid uses the Fraziers' copy of the Handbook for the Recently Deceased to open a portal to Saturn's moon Titan and summons one of its Sandworms that devours Delores and Rory. She then reveals that Betelgeuse's marriage contract is voided due to him illegally bringing her mother into the Netherworld. Freed from the contract, Lydia banishes Betelgeuse back there.
Delia is then escorted back to the Netherworld by Wolf, reuniting with Charles at the Soul Train's station as the couple then depart for the Great Beyond together. Lydia ends Ghost House to spend more time with Astrid, despite Betelgeuse continuing to haunt her.
Cast
Michael Keaton as Betelgeuse, a ghastly "bio-exorcist" who desires to marry someone from the living world. Both Keaton and director Tim Burton opted to keep the character as malicious and politically incorrect as he was in the original film due to their love for that character trait. Burton additionally provides the voice of a newborn version of the character. Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz, the former gothic teenager who was almost forced to marry Betelgeuse, now mother of Astrid Deetz and hostess of a talk show called Ghost House. Ryder initially imagined her character would live as a spinster in the Maitland residence's attic, but appreciated the development of her character, particularly around her relationship with daughter Astrid. Catherine O'Hara as Delia Deetz, Lydia's stepmother, Astrid's step-grandmother and Charles Deetz's widow, now the hostess of a real art show located in a SoHo gallery. Jenna Ortega as Astrid Deetz, Lydia's teenage daughter and Delia's step-granddaughter. Justin Theroux as Rory, a television producer and Lydia's ex-fiancé. He was inspired by the late Glenn Shadix's Otho Fenlock character from the original film. The writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar devised him as a character who everyone wanted to see getting his comeuppance, like Otho, and enjoying the idea of Lydia being in a weird codependent relationship which everyone sees that way, herself included. Gough and Millar wanted the audience to understand why Rory is with Lydia and that he was a "schmuck", but they felt that they needed to find Rory's humanity without him being a mere punchline. Once Theroux was cast and connected with the writers over Zoom, he provided Gough and Millar with ideas they incorporated. Willem Dafoe as Wolf Jackson, a Netherworld detective who was a B movie action star in life before he was inadvertently killed by a live grenade. Monica Bellucci as Delores LaFerve, Betelgeuse's ex-wife, who, in life, was a mysterious and soul-collecting occultist who poisoned Betelgeuse several centuries earlier during the Black Death before he fatally mutilated her with an axe in retaliation. Arthur Conti as Jeremy Frazier, the ghost of a troubled teenager who murdered his parents and becomes Astrid's brief love interest. Burn Gorman as Father Damien, a comically eloquent Irish priest in Winter River. Santiago Cabrera as Richard, Astrid's late father and Lydia's ex-husband who was eaten alive by piranhas in the Amazon and is now employed at the Netherworld's civil service. Nick Kellington as Bob, the anxious leader of Betelgeuse's shrunken-headed employees at the Netherworld's call centre whose soul is later drained by Delores. Amy Nuttall as Jane Butterfield Jr., a local real estate agent and the daughter of the original film's Jane Butterfield Sr. character. She was previously portrayed by Rachel Mittelman in said film as a child. Paul Warren as Tom, a bald and one-eyed member of Betelgeuse's shrunken-headed employees. Mark Heenehan (physical) and Charlie Hopkinson (voice) as Charles Deetz, the Deetzes' late patriarch who recently died in a shark attack following an airplane crash in the Pacific Ocean that occurred during his return from a birdwatching trip and, as a result of this, is left without most of the upper half of his body in death. The character is depicted with the likeness of his original portrayer, Jeffrey Jones, through various means, including reused photographs and a stop motion sequence that describes the character's death. These circumstances were inspired by a nightmare of Burton's that detailed his own death. Danny DeVito as a janitor in the Netherworld whose soul is drained by Delores during her introduction.
In addition, Jane Leaney and David Ayres portray Jeremy's parents and Georgina Beedle portrays Janet, Wolf Jackson's shot-dead secretary, who "keeps him real", while Filipe Cates portrays Vlad, a vampire-portraying young man whom Astrid marries in a dream Lydia has in the film's epilogue.
Production Development After the success of Beetlejuice (1988), a sequel was fast-tracked by The Geffen Film Company. Two Beetlejuice sequel scripts were commissioned in 1990: the first, Beetlejuice in Love, was penned by screenwriter Warren Skaaren, who did a heavy re-write on the first film's script. In Skaaren's sequel, Beetlejuice meets Leo, who plummets to his death while proposing to his girlfriend, Julia, on the Eiffel Tower. When Leo enters the afterlife, Beetlejuice escapes to the world of the living and pursues Julia. Skaaren died shortly after turning in his first draft of the In Love script. That same year, Tim Burton hired Jonathan Gems to write a potential Beetlejuice sequel titled Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian. "Tim thought it would be funny to match the surfing backdrop of a beach movie with some sort of German Expressionism, because they're totally wrong together", Gems said. The story followed the Deetz family moving to Hawaii, where Charles is developing a resort. They soon discover that his company is building on the burial ground of an ancient Hawaiian Kahuna. The spirit comes back from the afterlife to cause trouble, and Beetlejuice becomes a hero by winning a surf contest with magic. Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder agreed to do the film, on the condition that Burton directed, but both he and Keaton became occupied with Batman Returns (1992).
Burton was still interested in Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian in early 1991. Impressed with Daniel Waters' work on Heathers (1989), which also stars Winona Ryder, Burton approached him for a rewrite. However, he eventually signed Waters to write the script for Batman Returns. By August 1993, producer David Geffen hired Pamela Norris (Troop Beverly Hills, Saturday Night Live) to rewrite. Warner Bros. approached Kevin Smith in 1996 to rewrite the script, although Smith turned down the offer in favor of Superman Lives. Smith later joked that his response was, "Didn't we say all we needed to say in the first Beetlejuice? Must we go tropical?" In March 1997, Gems released a statement saying, "The Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian script is still owned by The Geffen Company and it will likely never get made. You really couldn't do it now anyway. Winona is too old for the role, and the only way they could make it would be to totally recast it". Burton had considered several other sequel ideas as well over the years, saying in 2024, "We talked about lots of different things. That was early on when we were going, Beetlejuice and the Haunted Mansion, Beetlejuice Goes West, whatever. Lots of things came up", but all those initial scenarios set in Hawaii, the Wild West or Paris, France were all scrapped.