After more than 35 years, the long awaited Bug juice sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuicewill be in theaters on September 6. However, fans may be somewhat surprised to learn that the title character is not getting as much screen time as they had hoped.
All told, Beetlejuice only appeared on screen for 17 minutes in Tim Burton's 1988 classic. And as Michael Keaton, “Ghost With the Most” himself, explained in a new GQ In an interview this week, there was a stipulation to agreeing to the sequel so that Beetlejuice wouldn't take up too much space, given the character's enduring and overwhelming popularity.
“The idea was, no, no, no, you can't fill it with Beetlejuice, it'll kill him,” Keaton told the publication. “I don't think the Beetlejuice character drives the story as much as he did in the first one. He's more of a part of the story in this one than he was in the first one, which is that this thing comes in and drives the movie a little bit.”
However, while Beetlejuice won't get as much or more screen time, Keaton reassures that the character won't be watered down for relatively sensitive audiences in 2024 and will remain a “perverted sicko”.
“He's a thing. More of a thing than a he or a woman, he's more of an it. And I'm not saying that to be politically correct. I just looked at him as something, like anything. I mean, there's definitely a strong male energy , like the stupid male energy, which I love,” he explained. “You don't want to touch that because you're not like, 'Well, it's a new year, and this thing would go like this.'
Beetlejuice 2as the sequel is also called, it picks up 36 years after the events of the first film, when the Deetz family returns to the family home after the unexpected death of Charles Deetz. Of course, it's not long before Lydia's (Winona Ryder) rebellious daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) stumbles upon the mysterious urban model in the attic and accidentally opens the gate to the afterlife.
Keaton, Ryder and Ortega are joined by Catherine O'Hara and newcomers Justin Theroux, Monica Bellucci and Willem Dafoe. You can watch the trailer below.