Michael Keaton Says He Wanted ‘Beetlejuice’ Sequel to “Feel Handmade”

Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice: Say it three times, and Michael Keaton will open up about the upcoming sequel of his iconic 1988 film, Beetlejuice.

In a recent interview with People magazine, the actor who portrays the rambunctious spirit revealed that he and director Tim Burton were “hesitant and cautious” about making a sequel for the classic but ended up having so much fun working on it.

“We thought, ‘You got to get this right. Otherwise, just don’t do it. Let’s just go on with our lives and do other things.’ So I was hesitant and cautious, and [Burton] was probably equally as hesitant and cautious over all these years,” he told the publication. “Once we got there, I said, ’OK, let’s just go for it. Let’s just see if we can do it, if we can pull this off.’”

Keaton shared that early in production, he and the filmmaker also discussed how neither one of them was particularly interested in doing something that was too technology-heavy.

“It had to feel handmade,” he said. “What made it fun was watching somebody in the corner actually holding something up for you, to watch everybody in the shrunken head room and say, ‘Those are people under there, operating these things, trying to get it right.’”

He continued, “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.”

Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara return for Beetlejuice 2, aka Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, which also stars Jenna Ortega, Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci and Justin Theroux in new roles. Sources previously told The Hollywood Reporter that the Ortega plays the daughter of Ryder’s Lydia, while Dafoe portrays an afterlife law enforcement officer, and Bellucci takes on the role of Beetlejuice’s wife.

The sequel also reunites Ortega with Wednesday director Burton, as well as co-showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. Production on the film wrapped in Vermont in November.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice hits theaters Sept. 6.