The American director Tim Burton acknowledged on Wednesday (28) that he had lost his passion for the film industry in recent years. However, he rediscovered his charm while filming the sequel to his horror comedy “Ghosts Have Fun “, from 1988.
With the name “The Ghosts Still Have Fun” in Brazil, the film opens the Venice Film Festival this year. The production brings together a large part of the original cast, including Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder while also introducing a number of new faces, such as Jenna Ortega famous for the series “Wandinha” – also by Burton.
Burton didn’t expect to revisit one of his early hits, but said he was encouraged by making Wednesday for Netflix in 2022 and decided it was time to revisit Keaton’s anarchic demon Beetlejuice.
“Over the last couple of years, I’ve been a little disillusioned with the film industry, you could say… this film was refreshing, kind of getting back to the things I love doing,” Burton said at a press conference at the festival.
After a string of early hits, including “Edward Scissorhands” and “Ed Wood” in the early 1990s, his more recent productions have been less fruitful, such as the 2019 live-action remake of “Dumbo,” which was panned by critics.
“I’m not looking to make a big sequel for the money or anything, I just wanted to do it for very personal reasons,” Burton said.
Set some 36 years after the original film, Ryder returns as Lydia, who has grown from the gothic teenager she once was to an anxious mother of a disinterested daughter, played by Ortega, who needs saving from the underworld.
While in the first film she had to fight off the lecherous Beetlejuice, this time Lydia needs his help to navigate the afterlife, where a soul-sucking monster, played by Monica Bellucci, is on the loose. The monster is also being pursued by a dead TV cop, played by Willem Dafoe.
Ortega, a global star thanks to “Wednesday,” said she was intimidated when she signed on for Burton’s new project. “I was joining a team of giants and very special people. … I just tried to mind my own business in the corner,” she said, sitting alongside the rest of the cast. “For me, I was just making sure that I wasn’t, you know, stealing the work of the lovely Winona at that time and, you know, doing something new.”
Burton admitted that he never understood why his initial film was such a huge success and said he had not watched it again when he began work on a sequel.
But he filmed exteriors at the same Victorian house in Vermont, and said the same playful energy from the original permeated the filming of the sequel.
“Beetlejuice” will open in theaters on September 5.
Cast of “Beetlejuice” arrives in Venice; see photos
This content was originally published in Tim Burton rediscovers his passion for cinema in “Beetlejuice” on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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