Michael Keaton is returning to his role as the ‘ghost with the most’ in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the upcoming sequel to Tim Burton’s 1988 classic. But there is one thing that he insisted on before returning to his famous role: not too much screen time for the bio-exorcist.
“I was ultra-clear about that. I said, Honestly, we’ll blow it if we do that. We’ll really screw this thing up if we say, Let’s just have a lot of Betelgeuse. That would get very tiresome in my opinion. Yes, he’s politically incorrect, but you know what? That’s why I love it,” he told Empire Magazine in an interview.
Believe it or not, according to Screen Rant, Keaton has about 17 minutes worth of screen time in the original movie. That film is 92 minutes long. Its sequel is still in post, and its length has yet to be confirmed.
Although his presence in the first film wasn’t even a quarter of the movie, Keaton’s performance has made Beetlejuice one of the most iconic characters in a horror comedy. He dropped many quote-worthy quips including, “Go ahead, make my millennium,” and “Not to mention the fact that you’re talking to a dead guy…” and “It’s showtime!”
Both Burton and Keaton were excited to revisit the characters. Burton said that he would only do it if Keaton returned and Keaton said it’s the only sequel he’s interested in. Also, the film had to lean on practical effects and not CGI for its storytelling.
“It had to feel handmade,” Keaton told People . “What made [Beetlejuice] fun was watching somebody in the corner actually holding something up for you, to watch everybody in the shrunken headroom and say, ‘Those are people under there, operating these things, trying to get it right.’ 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.”
Audiences will get to return to Winter River on September 6 when Beetlejuice Beetlejuice opens theatrically.