Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice! The first official trailer for Tim Burton‘s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is here! Warner Bros. dropped the clip on Thursday, offering fans their best look yet at the sequel to the 1988 cult classic. The sequel features returning stars Michael Keaton, Catherine O’Hara, and Winona Ryder, along with new cast members Jenna Ortega and Justin Theroux.
Set decades after the original film, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice sees Keaton reprise his role as “the ghost with the most,” aka the trickster and mischievous ghost Beetlejuice. Meanwhile, O’Hara and Ryder reprise their respective roles as Delia and Lydia Deetz, while Ortega, from Burton’s hit Netflix series Wednesday and also of Scream fame, is playing Astrid Deetz, Lydia’s daughter. Fellow newcomer Theroux stars as Rory, though details of the character are being kept under wraps. Monica Bellucci and Willem Dafoe will also appear in the film.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly about bringing Beetlejuice back to the big screen, Burton revealed the sequel was years in the making and something he and Keaton talked about on and off. Keaton, however, had no “burning desire” to do a follow-up “unless it felt right… I think we all felt the same way. It only made sense if it had an emotional hook.” The emotional hook, according to Burton, was Ryder’s Lydia and bringing together three generations of Deetz women.
“I so identified with the Lydia character, but then you get to all these years later, and you take your own journey, going from cool teenager to lame adult, back and forth again,” he shared. “That made it emotional, gave it a foundation. So that was the thing that really truly got me into it.”
The upcoming movie picks up decades after the events of the first movie starts with a death in the family. It centers around three generations of Deetz women as they return to Winter River. Per the official synopsis, “still haunted by Beetlejuice, Lydia’s life is turned upside down when her rebellious teenage daughter, Astrid, discovers the mysterious model of the town in the attic and the portal to the Afterlife is accidentally opened. With trouble brewing in both realms, it’s only a matter of time until someone says Beetlejuice’s name three times and the mischievous demon returns to unleash his very own brand of mayhem.”
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will hit theaters on Sept. 6, 2024.