First Look Photos Featuring the Cast of BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE and New Details Shared — GeekTyrant

Our first official look at Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has arrived with two photos featuring the main cast members of the film. They include Michael Keaton back in the role of Beetlejuice, and he’s looking great! The other photo features Catherine O'Hara as Delia, Jenna Ortega as Astrid, Winona Ryder as Lydia, and Justin Theroux as Rory.

Burton also talked about the film with EW, and in regard to the story that it tells, all he says is that, “The sequel picks up decades later with a death in the family. That's all I will say. There's something that happens that sets things in motion." 

When speculating what it is that sets things in motion, it could that be the death of Lydia's father, Charles Deetz (Jeffrey Jones), but the director played coy, saying: "We'll see."

Burton also goes on to describe getting Keaton to come back for the role and wear the classic costume and makeup as "a weird out-of-body experience. He just got back into it. It was kind of scary for somebody who was maybe not that overly interested in doing it. It was such a beautiful thing for me to see all the cast, but he, sort of like demon possession, just went right back into it."

The director went on to talk about some of the other concepts for a Beetlejuice sequel that have been discussed over the years saying: "We talked about lots of different things, That was early on when we were going, Beetlejuice and the Haunted Mansion, Beetlejuice Goes West, whatever. Lots of things came up."

The thing that got Burton interested in making this story was that it revolves around Ryder's Lydia and brings together three generations of Deetz women, including O'Hara's Delia and Ortega's Astrid. The filmmaker said: "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. That made it emotional, gave it a foundation. So that was the thing that really truly got me into it."

The movie also starsMonica Bellucci as Beetlejuice’s wife in the story, and Willem Dafoe a B-movie action star who died and became a police officer in the Afterlife.

Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (Wednesday and Smallville) wrote the script along with an earlier draft by Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg. Katzenberg and Grahame-Smith are also producing. Danny Elfman is returning to compose the score.

Beetlejuice Beetljuice is set to be released in theaters on September 6, 2024.