Tim Burton's 'Beetlejuice 2' Gets Standing Applause at Venice Film Festival

The 2024 Venice Film Festival kicked off with a green-haired, gothic bang with Tim Burton's long-awaited sequel to Beetlejuice, which opened the festival with a 3-minute standing ovation.

The applause was likely to last longer, but the Venice ceremony organizers quickly dimmed the lights as Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara and Jenna Ortega bowed and enjoyed the applause.

But the cast didn’t pull any punches. Keaton and Burton got a standing ovation as they signed dozens of autographs (though Burton declined a fan’s request to draw “my next tattoo” on a notebook she was carrying). Ortega, looking radiant in a red Dior gown, stole the show as the franchise’s newest addition, taking selfies with well-wishers in the theater’s foyer. As the show got underway, the 21-year-old star led a standing ovation for Sigourney Weaver, who was presented with an honorary Golden Lion before the screening of “Beetlejuice 2.”

The Warner Bros. fantasy horror comedy will hit theaters 36 years after Burton's original 1988 film, with Keaton, Ryder and O'Hara reprising their roles alongside new cast members Ortega, Monica Bellucci, Justin Theroux and Willem Dafoe. The film sees the Dietz family return to their old family home, this time with Ryder's rebellious teenage daughter (Ortega) who discovers a model of the city in the attic, opening a portal to the afterlife and releasing Keaton's Beetlejuice once again.

The long-awaited sequel was first teased shortly after the first film, which was a critical and commercial success that grossed $74.7 million, and the scripts were commissioned in 1990. Several ideas were tossed back and forth — including a story in which Beetlejuice goes to Hawaii — before Seth Grahame-Smith came on board as writer in 2011. But the project took a long time to get moving, and a sequel wasn’t officially announced until early 2022, this time from Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment alongside Warner Bros.

The wait seems to have paid off, as early reports indicate that Beetlejuice is expected to gross between $65 million and $80 million in its opening weekend in the United States.

Talk to diverse Days before the Venice Film Festival, Burton said “Beetlejuice” had saved him from retirement after making 2019's “Dumbo,” which received middling reviews.

“I thought, ‘This could have been it, really. I could have retired, or I could have been…well, I would never have been an animator again,’” he said. “But this revitalized me. A lot of times when you get into Hollywood, you try to be in charge of what you do with the budget and everything else, but sometimes you can lose yourself a little bit. It reinforced in me the feeling that it’s important to do what I want to do, because then everyone benefits.”