American actor Michael Keaton opened up about the upcoming sequel of his iconic 1988 film, Beetlejuice. In a recent interview with People magazine, the actor who plays the rowdy spirit confessed that he and director Tim Burton were hesitant and cautious about filming a sequel to the classic, but ended up having a great time working on it.
"We thought, 'You got to get this right. Otherwise, just don't do it. Let's just go on with our lives and do other things.' So I was hesitant and cautious, and [Burton] was probably equally as hesitant and cautious over all these years," he said. "Once we got there, I said, 'OK, let's just go for it. Let's just see if we can do it if we can pull this off.'"
Keaton revealed that early in the production process, he and the filmmaker discussed how neither of them was especially interested in creating something that was overly technological. "It had to feel handmade," he said. "What made it fun was watching somebody in the corner actually holding something up for you, to watch everybody in the shrunken headroom and say, 'Those are people under there, operating these things, trying to get it right.'"
He continued, "It's the most exciting thing when you get to do that again after years of standing in front of a giant screen, pretending somebody's across the way from you." Winona Ryder and Catherine O'Hara return in Beetlejuice 2, also known as Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, alongside newcomers Jenna Ortega, Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci, and Justin Theroux.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Ortega plays Lydia's daughter, Dafoe plays an afterlife law enforcement officer, and Bellucci plays Beetlejuice's wife. The sequel also reunites Ortega with Wednesday director Burton and co-showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. The film's production finished in Vermont in November. The film will hit theatres on September 6.
