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Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – Behind the Scenes (2024)
Michael Keaton is back as the eponymous "Ghost With the Most" in Tim Burton's highly anticipated "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice," which opens the Venice Film Festival this month and hits theaters in September. The actor recently told GQ magazine that one of his conditions for returning as Beetlejuice was that the sequel wouldn't increase his screen time. After all, the character was onscreen for just 17 minutes in the 1988 original. Beetlejuice's popularity has only grown since then, but that didn't mean he wanted the character to be the star of the show in "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice."
"The idea was, no, no, no, you can't load it up with Beetlejuice, that'll kill it," Keaton said of his return. "I think the Beetlejuice character doesn't drive the story as much as he did in the first one. He's more a part of the storyline in this one than he was in the first one, which is a case of, this thing comes in and drives the movie a little bit."
The "Beetlejuice" sequel reunites Keaton with Burton and original cast members Winona Ryder and Catherine O'Hara. Newcomers include Jenna Ortega and Willem Dafoe. The plot revolves around the strained relationship between Ryder's Lydia Deetz and her daughter, Ortega's Astrid. Keaton told SiriusXM in March that the mother-daughter backbone in the sequel gives it an emotional heft that the original lacked.
