Yes, You Should Be Worried About Beetlejuice 2

The oldest post I could find for "Beetlejuice 2" in the /Film archives is from 2011, but director Tim Burton and Warner Bros. have been wanting to make a follow-up to the 1988 original for literal decades. As early as 1990, Burton was developing "Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian," which would have seen the Deetz family moving to the island state and Michael Keaton's Beetlejuice eventually winning a surfing contest. (Yes, really.) That version obviously never happened, but ideas for a sequel have been bouncing around Hollywood ever since, and the project has gone through tons of stops and starts and false positives on its way to finally receiving a confirmed theatrical release date of September 6, 2024.

A rocky development alone is not enough of a reason to doubt this movie's quality; plenty of films have been delayed for years and ended up being masterpieces. (Just look at "Mad Max: Fury Road.") But there are a couple other key aspects here that have us slightly worried.

First, we're firmly in the David Zaslav era of Warner Bros. history. If you've been paying attention over the past couple of years, you know that's not a good thing: He's shown active hostility to artists during his tenure, and as long as he serves as the company's CEO, there's always a chance that any movie under the WB umbrella, including fully completed ones, could get mothballed as a tax write-off and never see the light of day. 

Second, and more importantly in this case, is the Tim Burton of it all. The director's early career run is legendary, but I think a strong case could be made that he hasn't made a great movie in more than 20 years. I'm one of the few defenders of his 2014 movie "Big Eyes," a film that proved he was able to step outside of his comfort zone, but unfortunately performed so poorly that he immediately retreated back into it and has not ventured out again since. But films like "Dumbo," "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children," "Frankenweenie," "Dark Shadows," "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," and the especially atrocious "Alice in Wonderland" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" have deeply soured his reputation. Will a long-gestating sequel to a 36-year-old film really be the film that vaults him back to greatness? History has given us plenty of reasons to be skeptical.

Then again, Michael Keaton is returning to play Beetlejuice again and seemingly had several opportunities to do so in the past, so maybe this iteration of the script was worth the wait for him. Fingers crossed.

We spoke about "Beetlejuice 2" and a ton of other films in today's episode of the /Film Daily podcast, which was all about our most anticipated movies of 2024. Give it a listen:

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