Catherine O’Hara‘s co-star Michael Keaton is paying his respects.
Michael and Catherine both starred in Beetlejuice and reunited for the sequelBeetlejuice Beetlejuice in 2024, and they also worked on other projects together. After news of the 71-year-old’s death on Friday, the actor was quick to share a tribute to their friendship. Sharing a recent photo of them, he wrote on Instagram:
“We go back before the first Beetlejuice. She’s been my pretend wife, my pretend nemesis and my real life, true friend. This one hurts. Man am I gonna miss her. Thinking about Beau as well.”
In many ways, Ken Burns is the Van Halen of historical documentary directors.
Before you jump, hear me out.
Watching the acclaimed filmmaker’s upcoming The American Revolutionwith some apprehension, it became clear that the six-part PBS series is the soulmate to Van Halen’s seminal but commercially disappointing 1981 album Fair Warning – in a very good way.
Debuting Sunday on PBS stations, the often-languorous American Revolution has all the slow pans across paintings and maps that appear in all of Burns’ work from 1981’s Brooklyn Bridge to The Civil War, 2009’s National Parks, biographies of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, 2011’s Prohibition, 2017’s The Vietnam War and last year’s Leonardo da Vinci.
Along with Burns and his and co-directors David P. Schmidt and Sarah Botstein’s use of evocative locations and out-of-focus re-creations, American Revolution has narration by Peter Coyote, and high-definition but measured sit-down interviews with historians.
With techniques made famous and mockingly infamous by The Civil War and subsequent Burns projects, American Revolution uses letters and meticulous examination of the time to represent ordinary men and women in extraordinary situations. Like so many Burns projects, there are those celebrity voice-overs from the likes of Samuel L. Jackson, Meryl Streep Tom Hanks, Paul Giamatti (playing, you guessed it, John Adams), poet Amanda Gorman, Hamiltonvet Jonathan Groff (not playing who you think) and Michael Keaton to name but a handful.
(L-R) Tom Hanks, Paul Giamatti, Amanda Gorman, Michael Keaton, Meryl Streep, Samuel L. Jackson and Jonathan Groff
Getty Images/Rich Polk for Deadline
Yes, there is a lot of the Burns tried and true in American Revolution. Add to that the fact that you know how it all turns out and, even as a student of American history, you get my trepidation going in.
So, let’s get back to that Van Halen comparison for a second.
Similar to the fourth album release from the David Lee Roth-fronted rockers, Burns’ take on the war that created America does stick to the decades-old methods and formats that have worked for him since The Civil War exploded on the small screen in 1990. When Fair Warning came out in 1981, some critics noted that it too had all the hallmarks of previous Van Halen albums and no real evolution.
Yet, some also acknowledged “Eddie [Van Halen]’s latest sound effects” and the submerged introduction of synthesizers to the band’s palate. The latter revelation was a game changer obvious to anyone who over the years followed the band after its synth-heavy blockbuster 1984.
In that context, when it comes to the quietly ambitious American Revolution, you don’t need to look too hard to notice something different going on under the surface from previous Burns works. Let’s put it this way: You don’t need to look too hard at a calendar, your local defunded PBS station or much else to see 2025 is almost as far away from 1990 as it is from 1981 or 1776.
The world has changed, the medium has changed, America has changed, and the stakes have definitely changed.
‘The American Revolution’
PBS
On the most integral level, the past decade in our frayed Republic has seen a domination by MAGA madness and the largely toxic discharge of social media. So, to put it mildly, there’s a lot of blood in the water in the culture and our sense of our collective history.
Having spent most of the past decade making American Revolution, Ken Burns clearly knows that. To that, like Van Halen’s Fair Warning, there is an urgent undercurrent that wasn’t in Burns’ previous films. Something is stirring in him, and in us — and the saga of the creation of this often unruly nation has something to tell us about what is happening now.
How that manifests itself for viewers likely depends on your own patience with the long series, and your voter-registration card.
Regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum or regarding Flat Earthers, there is no denying the inviolable sense of time and place in American Revolution. It’s as if Eddie Van Halen, without telling anyone, added an extra two strings on his guitar to reverberate through his Marshall stack, and the ages.
Eddie Van Halen
AP Photos
This is not the kind of American history MAGA loyalists like, and not just for the reasons you might think. To that, with the almost last breath of the Van Halen analogy, part of the success of The American Revolution is how it is loud and proud in a quiet way.
For another thing that perhaps won’t land well with MAGA crowd: it’s also complicated and quite diverse.
Which is to say, if you are looking for the Founding Fathers and their friends to be the guys in the white hats, you might want look somewhere else. For instance, not all the good guys are white (the David Oyelowo-voiced Olaudah Equiano is one example), and not all of them are guys (the Maya Hawke voice of Betsy Ambler).
Burns’ American Revolution also burns to a crisp the prevailing notion of the Great Man of American History.
Sorry George Washington and Alexander Hamilton fans, but there’s a lot more going on in the taverns where much of it happens than those infectious Lin-Manuel Miranda tunes tell you. Opening up the aperture, American Revolution often stares straight into the ugly and unsavory realpolitik of nation creation, with broken and bumbling men and women, well-meaning or not, stumbling into an idea of a better tomorrow.
Between the incomprehensibility and the incompetence on the side of the British Empire and the side of the American rebels that Burns outlines in American Revolution, the chaotic colonists’ attempts to free themselves from the rule of George III could have had all the hallmarks of a prequel to The Poseidon Adventure, with more boats.
As the losses and bodies pile up for the rebels (I’m not saying Battle of Long Island, but I’m saying Battle of Long Island), you many even wonder why they just didn’t give up to fight another day — you won’t be alone. That feeling and, dare I say it without seeming too fancy, the contemporary subtext, is part of Burns and gang’s genius with American Revolution.
You want to look away because it is almost painful to be so deep in the muck, and you know how it ends, so why must we be stuck in this muck? Can’t we get to the glories of Independence Hall? Yet despite those typical barriers to belief, you should keep watching.
Why?
Truth be told, with all the mishaps (to put it politely) and egos among the deeply divided rebels, as the episodes move along something delightful and insightful emerges over the talking-head historians, history lessons and trivia.
Even in this dank decade for American democracy that we are living in now, the recently neglected sense of the near universal inspiration created by our centuries-old revolution springs to life anew. Turns out, the tale of the wild American dogs chasing the Brits back over the pond and beginning one of the greatest leaps of faith in human history still makes for pretty damn good history, on the small screen and otherwise.
Or, in the words of Van Halen: “Change, nothin’ stays the same/Unchained, and ya hit the ground runnin’.
You also get some unconventional wisdom from American Revolution amidst stories you’ve heard a million times before — great stuff to show off at your kids’ school recitals and soccer practices.
The motivations behind Benedict Arnold’s turn to the British side, for example, actually turns out to be much more about the heart and of the divine than they ever taught us in school. Gen. Arnold (voiced by Keaton, who you are kinda dying for him to say “I am a traitor” in a “I am Batman” way) was all too human, it seems.
To be honest, especially when it comes to the American rebels partnering with the French and their despotic monarchy against George III and the Redcoats, Arnold’s betrayal of Washington (the latter voiced by the once George W. Bush-portraying Josh Brolin) and alliance with the British makes some degree of sense, at least from his perspective.
Which is to say, if you are interested in real people, real battles (literal, social, racial and political) and the messiness of what 1776 was and is all about, American Revolution is a tome well worth sticking with until the end – even though we all know how it ends.
Or do we?
To paraphrase that great American poet and hopefully future Ken Burns subject Gil Scott-Heron: The American Revolution will be televised, and it will be well worth watching.
Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline co-starring in “Disclaimer,” a psychological thriller from writer-director Alfonso Cuarón, and Jelly Roll releasing “Beautifully Broken,” a follow-up to his breakout album “Whitsitt Chapel,” are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you.
Also among the streaming offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: Sean Wang’s semi-autobiographical feature debut “Dìdi,” Hulu’s first Spanish-language series “La Máquina” and Charli XCX’s deluxe, remixed, double-album version of her culture-shifting album “Brat.”
NEW MOVIES TO STREAM OCT. 7-13
— “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” was No. 1 at the box office as recently as two weeks ago, but beginning Tuesday, Tim Burton’s popular sequel will be available, for a price. You can buy it digitally for $25 on Prime Video, Apple TV and other video-on-demand platforms. In it, the Deetz family returns to Winter River after a family tragedy. There, Lydia (Winona Ryder), still haunted by Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton), is forced into another afterlife odyssey when her teenage daughter (Jenna Ortega) discovers a portal. In her review, AP’s Jocelyn Noveck called it “a joyously rendered sequel that sometimes makes sense, and sometimes doesn’t, but just keeps rollicking.”
— Sue Kim’s documentary “The Last of the Sea Women,” streaming Friday, Oct. 11 on Apple TV+, captures the lives and livelihood of the Haenyeo, the community of South Korean fisherwoman who for generations have free dived for seafood off the coast of Korea’s Jeju Island. Threats abound for the Haenyeo, who are mostly in their 60s and 70s. Thy ply their trade in a warming ocean contaminated by sea garbage and the Fukushima nuclear accident.
— One of the indie highlights of the summer, Sean Wang’s “Dìdi,” is now streaming on Peacock. Wang’s semi-autobiographical feature debut, a coming of age story set in the Bay Area in 2008, is about a 13-year-old Taiwanese-American boy (Izaac Wang) struggling with where he fits in. That includes with his family (Joan Chen plays his mother) and fellow skater kids whom he begins making videos with. The film, funny and tender, is a breakthrough for the emerging filmmaker Wang, whose short “Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó, ” was Oscar nominated earlier this year.
— Brat summer came and went, but the hedonistic ideologies behind Charli XCX’s feel-good album endure. On Friday, Oct. 11, she will release “Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat,” a deluxe, remixed, double-album version of her culture-shifting album “Brat,” this time featuring A-listers like Billie Eilish, Lorde, her tour mate Troye Sivan, her forever-hero Robyn, and more. Just don’t confuse this one with her other Brat re-release, “Brat and It’s the Same but There’s Three More Songs So It’s Not.”
— He’s the not-so-new name on everyone’s lips: Jelly Roll will release a follow-up to his breakout album, 2023’s “Whitsitt Chapel” on Friday, Oct. 11. Little is known about the 22-track “Beautifully Broken” beyond its previously released tracks “I Am Not Okay,” “Get By,” “Liar” and “Winning Streak” — the latter of which he debuted during the premiere of Saturday Night Live’s 50th season, joined by a choir. That one was inspired by an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and the album will no doubt center on the kind of stories he’s become known for: Soulful country-rock on adversity, addiction, pain, suffering, and ultimately, chasing safety.
— A decade removed from “Shower,” the viral, bubblegum pop song that launched her career, and Mexican American singer Becky G has found her in lane in Spanish-language, hybrid-genre releases, crossing language barriers and cultural borders. “Encuentros,” out Friday, Oct. 10, is her latest — a follow-up to 2023’s “Esquinas” — and continuation of her work in regional Mexicana styles made all her own, from the single “Mercedes,” which features corrido star Oscar Maydon’s deep tenor, and beyond.
— On Friday, Oct. 11, Duran Duran will release “Danse Macabre – De Luxe,” a deluxe reissue of their celebrated 2023 LP of the same name – a mix of covers and gothic originals. Surprises abound, even for the most dedicated Duran Duran fan: Like in their cover of ELO’s “Evil Woman,” or on the song “New Moon (Dark Phase),” a reimagination of “New Moon On a Monday,” featuring former member Andy Taylor.
— Friends and frequent collaborators Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal team up on Hulu’s first Spanish-language series called “La Máquina.” Bernal plays an aging boxer named Esteban Osuna. His longtime manager (Luna) secures him one last fight to go out a champ but there are major obstacles. The boxer has taken a lot of hits to the head over the years and his mind seems to be slipping and a criminal organization wants him to throw the fight or else. Eiza González also stars as Osuna’s ex-wife, a reporter investigating fixed boxing matches in Mexico. “La Máquina” debuts Wednesday.
— The first spinoff of the 2023 Prime Video spy series “Citadel,” which starred Priyanka Chopra and Richard Madden, debuts Thursday on the streamer. “Citadel: Diana” stars Matilda De Angelis takes place in Italy. An India-based version called “Citadel: Honey Bunny” stars Varun Dhawan and Samantha Ruth Prabhu, and premieres in November.
— Netflix’s favorite sun-drenched, treasure-hunting teens of North Carolina, known as the Pogues, are back for more adventures in “Outer Banks.” Season four, premiering Thursday, is divided into two parts. The show stars Chase Stokes and Madelyn Cline.
— Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline co-star in “Disclaimer,” a psychological thriller, on Apple TV+ from writer, director Alfonso Cuarón that premiered at last month’s Venice Film Festival. Blanchett plays a respected documentarian who recognizes she’s the inspiration for a character in a new novel that threatens to expose her secrets. The limited-series also features Kodi Smit McPhee, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jung Ho-yeon and Lesley Manville and premieres Friday, Oct. 11.
— Atlus/Sega’s absorbing Persona series has grown over the years from a cult hit to a genuine blockbuster, but it’s been seven years since the last chapter. Meanwhile, several of its creators have branched off to form their own Studio Zero, and they’re about to launch their debut title, Metaphor: ReFantazio. Instead of Persona’s Tokyo-set teen drama, Metaphor presents a power struggle in a pseudo-medieval kingdom. The combat, however, evokes Persona’s zippy blend of turn-based and real-time action, and when you aren’t fighting you’ll need to spend time building relationships with the locals. If you’ve been craving a chance to explore a new world for dozens of hours, this one opens up Friday, Oct. 11, on PlayStation 5/4, Xbox X/S and PC.
It’s officially September, and for the first weekend of the month, Beetlejuice Beetlejuicewas the record-breaking, box office winner.
Warner Bros. and Tim Burton’s horror-comedy sequel opened to $145.4 million. According to Variety, the bulk of that came domestically, where it began its theatrical run with $110 million. It’s the second-biggest September debut of all time behind the $123 million debut of 2017’s It: Chapter One (and directly ahead of It: Chapter Two’s $91 million in 2019). For 2024 overall, it’s the third-best domestic opener of the year behind Deadpool & Wolverine’s massive $211.4 million start and Inside Out 2’s $154.2 million.
There’s been a big marketing push behind Beetlejuice Beetlejuice over the past several months, and renewed interest in the larger franchise. Along with getting people to rewatch the first film to see if it still holds up (and maybe just Burton’s entire filmography overall), it definitely helps that the 90s animated series recently hit Tubi ahead of the sequel’s release. Its stars can also be credited: people love them some Winona Ryder, Michael Keaton, and Jenna Ortega, particularly the latter thanks to Wednesday and the Scream sequels. Add on the strong word of mouth from its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, and it’s no surprise that folks have drank the Juice, as it were.
What else is there to look forward to this month? Genre-wise, Blumhouse’s Speak No Evilremake will finally hit theaters on September 13, along with a one-day run for the first three episodes of Dandadan, Lionsgate’s action-comedy The Killer’s Game, and the Megan Fox sci-fi horror flick Subservience. The folllowing week on September 20, we’ve got the animated prequel Transformers One, Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley’s The Substance, and Halle Berry protecting kids once more in Never Let Go. Finally, September 27 will close things out with Hellboy: The Crooked Man, The Wild Robot, Azrael, and Megalopolis.
The long-in-coming sequel isn’t just a nostalgic retread — it’s a reminder of what makes the director great. Photo: Parisa Taghizadeh/Warner Bros.
Midway through Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Delia Deetz (Catherine O’Hara) demands to know “where’s the obnoxious little goth girl who tormented me all those years ago?” The flamboyant conceptual artist is talking to her stepdaughter, Lydia (Winona Ryder), who’s grown from the morose teenager of Beetlejuice (1988) into the middle-aged star of a hokey ghost-hunting reality show. But you get the feeling that this is a question director Tim Burton could just as well be posing to himself. The original film was born out of the hectic creative heyday Burton had in the ’80s and ’90s, before he got mired in moribund Disney remakes and bewildering adaptations starring (an otherwise great) Eva Green. Like his character Lydia, who describes what she’s done as selling out, Burton passed from a youthful infatuation with darkness into more grown-up concerns, among them whichever one made 2019’s Dumbo seem like a good idea. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in some ways itself a product of those concerns, both as a 36-years-later sequel and as a story about how Lydia has since stepped into the position of the distracted parent who’s unable to connect with their own moody child. And yet somehow there’s nothing cynical about it. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is, instead, a return to form that finds Burton and much of the previous cast getting weird, gross, and, yes, goth in both an idyllic New England town and a gleefully bureaucratic afterlife.
In the first Beetlejuice, monied New Yorkers were just as much the antagonists as the fast-talking ghoulie of the title (sort of — he’s technically “Betelgeuse” in that film). The Deetz family first arrive in Winter River, Connecticut, full of condescension, resentment, and some regrettable approaches to remodeling, and it feels entirely in character that by Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, they appear to have partially or entirely returned to the city. Lydia, who’s kept the distinct spiky bangs while graduating to more Elvira-esque dresses, plays “psychic mediator” in front of a live studio audience while her producer and boyfriend, Rory (an oily Justin Theroux), hovers nearby. Her daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega, made for this), is ensconced in a boarding school where she heads up a doomer-y climate club. Delia has become a Manhattan art star, if her gallery-wide show, “The Human Canvas,” is any indication. The death of her husband, Charles, is both the inciting incident and a handy way of dealing with the fact that the actor who originally played the man, Jeffrey Jones, is now a convicted sex offender — he gets his head bitten off by a shark and spends the rest of the film as a walking torso. Charles’s funeral provides an excuse for the three women to return to Winter River, where, in the course of cleaning out the house, they come back into contact with a certain foul-mouthed spirit who’s still holding a candle for Lydia, the one who got away.
Running through Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is the fitting theme of shaking off malaise, whether that comes in the form of lingering grief (Astrid’s father, played by Santiago Cabrera, died not long after he and Lydia split), romantic inertia (Rory hides his manipulations behind therapyspeak), or supernatural hauntings. While Michael Keaton slips zestfully back into the role of Beetlejuice like he never left, and the always reliable O’Hara is spookily unchanged, Ryder plays Lydia, poignantly, as a brittle adult who’s stuck dressing in the style she affected a few decades ago, as though she’d gotten interrupted before she could fully finish growing up. When she begs Rory for one of her pills to get through the day, it’s a moment that’s just on the edge of being a little too real, but the movie otherwise wears its emotional allegories lightly. Lydia may have some unfinished trauma from the past that she has to exorcize, but she also has actual ghosts to contend with. When Astrid, a devout nonbeliever, meets a dreamy neighborhood boy named Jeremy (Arthur Conti), she learns that her mother isn’t delusional about all the visions she claims to have after all, and soon the characters have to enlist the help of a fiend whose name they never wanted to speak again (much less say three times). In there, also, is a stop-motion sequence, undead hallways at impossible angles, all the cleverly mangled waiting-room corpses imaginable, and the amusing but poetic visual of the Deetz house cloaked in a mourning veil. It’s all rendered in scenes that lean heavily on practical effects (including a demonic baby Beetlejuice that crawls across the ceiling à la the detox scene from Trainspotting).
If that sounds like an odd, lopsided plot, well, the first Beetlejuice lurched along to its own idiosyncratic calypso rhythms too. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice trades that Caribbean beat in for a disco one that works startlingly well, maybe because it matches the film’s jolting energy. When Monica Bellucci, playing Beetlejuice’s soul-sucking ex Delores, staples the chopped-up chunks of her body back together to the sound of the Bee Gees, it’s a gruesomely jubilant sequence. And when the film arrives at a lip-synced version of “MacArthur Park,” there’s genuine joy to the way the musical number is staged. So many recent revisitations of old properties play like corporate attempts to reanimate the dead — literally, in the case of movies like Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Alien: Romulus. But Beetlejuice Beetlejuice manages to avoid the feeling that its only obligation is to dutifully run through everything familiar one more time. Instead, watching it is a small but significant relief, like reconnecting with an estranged friend and finding out that you still get along after all — and for more reasons than just shared history, back when you were both obnoxious little goth girls.
Turns out the Elvira-inspired intro to the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice trailer is rooted in a new character development for the grown-up Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder).
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In a new interview with Ryder in Empire, we learn that after the events of 1988’s Beetlejuice, the goth teen icon known for her deadpan delivery and penchant for ghost photography leaned into her relationship with the dead to “host her own TV series: Ghost House With Lydia Deetz.” We cannot wait to see what that entails, and if it will be a way to explore how the Maitlands might have moved on once they resolved their unfinished business—when alive, they’d longed to be parents; at the end of Beetlejuice, they’re shown to be helping raise Lydia—and crossed over. Original film stars Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin are notably absent from the announced cast list of Warner Bros. upcoming sequel to Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice.
Ryder talked about returning as an older Lydia and reuniting with director Burton along with co-stars Michael Keaton and Catherine O’Hara. “I struggle to find the words,” Ryder told the magazine. “It’s just one of the most special experiences that I’ve ever had. The fact that we’re coming back to it, it’s… It’s beyond.” She also added, “This is a first for me. I’ve never revisited a character, ever.”
From the looks of it, Lydia is that Gen X goth adult whose look may have shifted slightly but remains curated in black with her iconic spiked bangs and smudgy charcoal eyeliner. In the clip of her with the Elvira dress homage, it’s clear Burton is once again paying tribute to how horror hosts evoke that effortless dark demeanor with a bit of camp that younger generations might not get. And it makes sense, because one of the things Burton wants to tackle with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is what happens when the weird goth kid grows up. He put a lot of his personal experience in Lydia’s new story, he told Empire. “The new film became very personal to me, through the Lydia character,” he said. “What happened to Lydia? You know, what happens to people? What happens to all of us? What’s your journey from a gothic kind of weird teenager to what happens to you 35 years later?”
This was key to Ryder’s journey of finding Lydia for the film. “I went through so many stages of, ‘Who is she now?’, but I always wanted to have it be Lydia. She can’t lose who she was,” she said. For one thing, she’s now mom to Astrid (played by Wednesday’s Jenna Ortega) who becomes involved with the summoning of Beetlejuice, bringing back Lydia’s memories of the past but also causing her to reflect who she’s become in the time since: “She can’t be the same person, she can’t be just completely deadpan, she has to have evolved, but she also has to have kept that thing she had when we first met her. So that was the big challenge for me.”
BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE | Official Trailer
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice opens September 6 in theaters.
Tim Burton’sBeetlejuice introduced the blueprint for cinematic meta agents of chaos into pop culture long before Disney’s Genie from Aladdin or the MCU’s Deadpool and Loki. Without much of a mythology, save for some comparisons to trickster entities of folklore and classic lit like Puck from Shakespeare’s AMidsummer Night’s Dream, Betelgeuse—as his name is spelled in the film’s flashy neon sign—can be anything not beholden to a history.
First Fandoms: Emma McDonald
Michael Keaton’s original summoning of the character introduced Beetlejuice as an unreliable narrator, which is followed in every variant of him we’ve seen in television and on stage; he has powers we don’t quite understand and no one can control outside of saying his name three times before he can stop them. Keaton’s version of the character will seen again in this September’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice—and though there’s always some trepidation awaiting a long-in-the-making sequel, here’s why we’re too not worried about what to expect from this one.
In the 1988 dark comedy about life as ghosts for the recently departed, Keaton shone as the larger-than-life poltergeist in a performance that helped make Burton’s wacky creation iconic. With stand-up gags and stop-motion buffoonery (some of which might not be so PC nowadays), the villain of his own movie almost stole the show from Winona Ryder’s teen goth dream Lydia and her ghostly found family after nearly getting rid of her living family (who may have deserved it). The film grossed $74,664,632 in North America, garnering its success in theaters and being embraced as a hit family film about death. It also primed Keaton to reunite with Burton for Batman.
Image: WB Entertainment
Beetlejuice’s jump in the line from the films into becoming a cultural staple was propelled by Beetlejuice, the animated series. The cartoon had a more family-friendly, looser interpretation of the plot introduced in the film. It got rid of the Maitlands and the questionable child-bride thread, and instead made Beetlejuice a lovable manic sidekick Lydia rehabilitates into more of an anti-hero. Their spooky cartoon adventures ran from 1989 to 1991 and it became a popular movie-to-show experiment, solidifying Beetlejuice’s place as a spooky pop-culture star.
His inclusion in the real world through his presence at Universal Studios theme parks continued to keep the Ghost with the Most in the zeitgeist through the ‘90s. Beetlejuice Graveyard Revue was my first introduction to the character before watching the film, which came out before I was born. The live theme park stage show was a monster mash of pop-rock music covers performed by the Universal Monsters and hosted by Beetlejuice; it debuted in the ‘90s but had updated iterations throughout the years. It was a genius move by Universal, crafting a formative theme park-experience that made such an impact on monster kids, goths, and normies—reframing Beetlejuice as the crypt keeper for a new generation but for silly spooky nonsense.
Full Final Performance of Beetlejuice Graveyard Revue at Universal Studios Florida
Because… why is he hosting a graveyard jukebox musical? What does it have to do with the movie? Why are the Universal Monsters there? Wait—no, they make sense, why is he (a Warner Bros. property) there? By the time he jumped out of the grave none of those questions mattered; he was back and badder than ever. Beetlejuice has been a Universal Studios character meet and greet staple ever since—even past the closing of his revue back in 2015. Most recently in 2021, Beetlejuice got a Halloween Horror Nights house at Universal Studios Orlando; it proved to be one of the annual event’s most popular attractions and showed that fans were still clamoring for more, even before Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was greenlit.
Image: Universal Studios Products and Experiences
Still another iteration of Beetlejuice came to life shortly before the pandemic. In 2019 a Broadway musical adaptation of the property hit the stage for a stint before returning in 2021 and heading out on a national tour. The show, starring Alex Brightman (who recently was featured as Richard Dreyfuss in the Jaws behind-the-scenes play The Shark is Broken), may appear at first to be merely a musical version of the film—however, if you’ve seen it, you know it’s much more than that. The book for the musical, written by Scott Brown and Anthony King, departs greatly from the film with a more cohesive storyline, centering Lydia’s journey through the grief of losing her mother (while her dad quickly remarries Delia), and the Maitlands’ grief at not being able to live long enough to have a family. Both give the story more to explore at depth—all while retaining the funhouse comedy romp that comes from dealing with death by means of Beetlejuice’s comedic chaos counseling. By the time the second act hits, it feels like such a completely different story from the movie in a good way, and if it happens to stop in your town on tour, don’t miss it.
Image: Matthew Murphy
Each variant of the Beetlejuice story down to its core is about the character’s freedom to fit into any medium with meta commentary about death—perhaps because since he’s dead, he exists outside reality. His presence makes sense of the unexplainable not by giving answers but by exploring the questions people have about life and death through a movie, cartoon, haunted house, and musical. Beetlejuice’s modus operandi is to not entirely change others, but to be changed by the situations he’s in—all while being his best hedonistic self and at most encouraging the living to live a little through the horrors of humanity. It’s why he and Lydia have become goth legends for the Hot Topic and Spirit Halloween crowds. Beetlejuice isn’t high-brow “cinema,” it’s about a guy who’s the executioner of gallows humor. And that is why we shouldn’t be too worried about Beetlejuice Beetlejuice: it’s not a legacy sequel that has a bar to reach, and I honestly think it might make fun of that concept in the best way. I’m just hoping for another good time, a new reason to laugh and not be afraid of death while seeing that Beetlejuice fella be up to no good again before getting exorcised back to his resting place… we know it’s not final.
‘Knox Goes Away’ proves Michael Keaton still has everything it takes. Courtesy of Saban Films
Agreeable, multifaceted Michael Keaton has been away from the screen for a while, but as both star and director of Knox Goes Away, his fresh and sophisticated new crime thriller, he proves he’s forgotten nothing about how to invest an offbeat film with his own unique sensibility and control it with precision and power.
KNOX GOES AWAY ★★★(3/4 stars) Directed by: Michael Keaton Written by: Gregory Poirier Starring: Michael Keaton, Al Pacino, Marcia Gay Harden, Ray McKinnon Running time: 114 mins.
In a smart script about crime and psychology by Gregory Poirier, Keaton irons out more twists than a scenic railway as John Knox, a sophisticated and highly educated hit man diagnosed with a rare neurological condition that prolongs mental collapse and hastens a fast-moving form of dementia. He has one last job before retirement, but with this toxic new condition and a prognosis of only a few months to live, everything goes south and he mistakenly kills three victims instead of one, including his partner and best friend (Ray McKinnon). Then, during months of decline, while he’s trying to re-organize his game plan, regain his old self-confidence, adjust to the knowledge that his career as a contract killer is over, and arrange his assets to cash in on the money he’s saved, his problems are further exacerbated when his estranged son Miles (James Marsden), whom he hasn’t seen in years, shows up at his door in the midnight hours, bloody and desperately in need of help. He’s just killed his 16-year-old daughter’s boyfriend and begs Knox to help cover up the violent crime. All he wants is to end a tense, regretful life in peace, but before Knox “goes away,” there are several loose ends he must tie together. It doesn’t matter how many more bodies he adds to the growing crime scene. He’s going away for good, so will anyone care?
While Knox devises an elaborate plan to take care of the people who survive him, it’s interesting to watch Keaton go through the motions of his life—disposing of evidence, opening locked doors, eating spare ribs with great relish. In and out of his struggles parades an imposing cast of supporting players who fill every role with the kind of substance that keeps an uncommon thriller thrilling: Marcia Gay Harden as his ex-wife, Al Pacino as the gangster boss who offers advice when the cops close in, Joanna Kulik as the call girl who betrays him. Knox is not an easy man to warm up to—and the movie doesn’t ask us to—but as he begins to correct the mistakes he’s made and act like the father and grandfather he’s never been as his last act of reconciliation (and because of Keaton’s charisma), a sense of compassion begins to surface. The star directs this forlorn neo-noir with a solid and unwavering strength, portraying both Knox’s decline from the cold, calculating professional criminal and the lost, confused father searching for ways to make a fresh start at the end of the game. Knox Goes Away is an exemplary crime drama that looks at old cliches with a fresh slant and gives a reliable but still surprising star a chance to demonstrate the range and depth of character he rarely gets the chance to explore.
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice: Say it three times, and Michael Keaton will open up about the upcoming sequel of his iconic 1988 film, Beetlejuice.
In a recent interview with People magazine, the actor who portrays the rambunctious spirit revealed that he and director Tim Burton were “hesitant and cautious” about making a sequel for the classic but ended up having so much fun 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 told the publication. “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 shared that early in production, he and the filmmaker also discussed how neither one of them was particularly interested in doing something that was too technology-heavy.
“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 head room 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.”
Beetlejuice Poster
Courtesy of Warner Bros.
Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara return for Beetlejuice 2, aka Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which also stars Jenna Ortega, Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci and Justin Theroux in new roles. Sources previously told The Hollywood Reporter that the Ortega plays the daughter of Ryder’s Lydia, while Dafoe portrays an afterlife law enforcement officer, and Bellucci takes on the role of Beetlejuice’s wife.
Tim Burton was not a fan of Nicolas Cage’s Superman cameo in “The Flash”.
The DC and Warner Bros. film — released back in June — featured a variety of cameo appearances from plenty of famous faces; however, Cage’s unexpected cameo stood out the most compared to those of Ben Affleck, Michael Keaton and George Clooney, who all appeared separately as Bruce Wayne/Batman in the film, reprising their former takes on the superhero.
Burton — who directed Keaton as Batman in 1989’s “Batman” and its 1992 sequel “Batman Returns” — was previously set to direct Cage, 59, as Superman in “Superman Lives” in the late ’90s, following the success of his “Batman” franchise at Warner Bros. However, the project was axed after pre-production went on for an extensive two-year period.
In a recent interview, the filmmaker and animator reacted to Cage’s Superman cameo and Keaton’s Batman return in “The Flash”, to which he harshly compared them to the current trend of using AI technology to reimagine films and characters.
While in conversation with the British Film Institute, Burton, 65, emphasized that he definitely wasn’t impressed with the project decision to “misappropriate” both of his interpretations of the two characters, particularly Cage’s Superman, which he argued was almost a total CGI creation that felt completely artificial.
“But also it goes into another AI thing, and this is why I think I’m over it with the studio. They can take what you did, Batman or whatever, and culturally misappropriate it, or whatever you want to call it,” he explained. “Even though you’re a slave of Disney or Warner Brothers, they can do whatever they want. So in my latter years of life, I’m in quiet revolt against all this.”
Elsewhere, Burton revealed that, today, he has no remorse over the missed opportunity to helm his own film about the Man of Steel, despite admitting at the time that the scrapped film was a painful loss.
“No, I don’t have regrets,” he told the BFI. “I will say this: when you work that long on a project and it doesn’t happen, it affects you for the rest of your life. Because you get passionate about things, and each thing is an unknown journey, and it wasn’t there yet. But it’s one of those experiences that never leaves you, a little bit.”
After months of uncertainty, actor Ezra Miller is still at the helm for DC Comic’s upcoming film, The Flash.
In a new trailer released during the Super Bowl on Sunday, Miller, who uses they/them pronouns, reprises their role as the ultra-speedy superhero the Flash.
Miller, 30, previously portrayed the Flash, also known as Barry Allen, in 2016’s Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and 2017’s Justice League.
According to a press release for the film, The Flash sees Barry Allen use his superpowers to travel back in time in an attempt to change the past and save his mother.
“But when his attempt to save his family inadvertently alters the future, Barry becomes trapped in a reality in which General Zod has returned, threatening annihilation,” the press release reads.
In the trailer, the Flash meets his alternate dimension doppelgänger as well as both Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck as Batman.
Keaton played the caped crusader in Tim Burton’s 1989 film Batman. Affleck put his own spin on the gravelly voiced superhero first in the 2016 film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, then again later that year for a brief cameo in Suicide Squad. In 2017, Affleck also played Batman in the ensemble film Justice League, alongside Miller.
Last year, there was ample speculation over the future of Miller’s involvement with DC and Warner Bros. A string of arrests and erratic behaviour from Miller, including allegations of assault, grooming and burglary, left studio execs reportedly concerned.
Miller publicly apologized in August. In a statement to Variety, they said a period of “intense crisis” prompted their recent actions and said they’re now seeking mental health treatment.
“Having recently gone through a time of intense crisis, I now understand that I am suffering complex mental health issues and have begun ongoing treatment,” Miller explained. “I want to apologize to everyone that I have alarmed and upset with my past behaviour. I am committed to doing the necessary work to get back to a healthy, safe and productive stage in my life.”
In January, Miller agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of trespassing after they were accused of burglarizing a Vermont home and stealing several bottles of alcohol last year.
Also last month, DC Studios co-CEO Peter Safran said Miller is “completely committed to their recovery.”
“We are fully supportive of that journey they are on right now,” Safran said, adding the studio would discuss Miller’s future “when the time is right.”
“But right now, they are completely focused on their recovery. And in our conversation with them, in the last couple of months, it feels like they are making enormous progress,” he said.
TheFlash will be released in theatres on June 16, 2023.
The whole production cycle of DC‘sThe Flash has been complicated and shrouded in mystery. Luckily, Saoirse-Monica Jackson has shed just a little bit of light. We still don’t know exactly who she is yet, but we do have a few hints as to her character’s temperament. Apparently, Warner Bros. is still trying to keep as much of this project under wraps as possible.
“I’m so scared of Warner Bros. I’m just so delighted that I got the part that I’m so scared to even speak about it in case I get fired. So I can’t tell you anything at the moment, but I’m really delighted about playing her. She’s a really fun, interesting character and a very different character from things I’ve played in the past. I’ve worked with some amazing people and I just loved the experience.”
It’s not much to go on, but knowing what we already know about the movie, there are a few options. First of all, it could be any character mentioned in the DCEU chronology so far. Secondly, she could be anyone from the Tim BurtonBatman universe, since we know Michael Keaton‘s Batman is going to be a pretty big part of the movie. She could be Catwoman, Poison Ivy, or really a ton of other people from Batman’s rogues’ gallery.
It could also be characters from the universe of Barry Allen himself, leading some people to speculate that she could be portraying The Golden Glider. She’s a supervillain, who actually already showed up in seasons one and two of The CW‘sThe Flash. The Golden Glider is an Olympic-level figure skater, who has skates that allow her to travel quickly on any surface, including in mid-air. She also employs an arsenal of deadly gadgets.
Only time will tell who Jackson ends up portraying, and since she wasn’t in any of the trailers, it’s likely that we’ll just have to wait until the movie’s release. After a good few delays, it seems that the final release date has landed on June 23, 2023.
Every DC Comics Movie, Ranked From Worst to Best
From Superman and the Mole Men to The Suicide Squad, we ranked every movie based on DC comics.
