‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ will open the 2024 Venice Film Festival
Come se dice “Beetlejuice” in Italiano?
The first of the major fall festivals has announced its opening night film, and, perhaps a bit surprising, the Venice International Film Festival will kick off with “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” Tim Burton’s “next generation” sequel to his 1988 classic.
The out-of-competition screening will serve as the movie’s world premiere.
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” brings back Oscar nominee and Emmy winner Michael Keaton as the titular undead prankster, two-time Oscar nominee Winona Ryder as the gloomy gal who summons him into our realm, and Emmy winner Catherine O’Hara as her artsy mother upset about moving to the sticks. Jenna Ortega, a Burton-world alum after the hit series “Wednesday,” is new to the franchise as Ryder’s daughter, plus Justin Theroux (playing Ryder’s husband), Willem Dafoe, Monica Belluci, and Burn Gorman. Not returning are Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis’s characters (technically, the original’s main characters) or Jeffrey Jones as Ryder’s dad, for obvious reasons.
“Beetlejuice,” Burton’s second feature after “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” was a surprise box office success and an even bigger hit on home video and cable television. It inspired an animated series that ran for three years, plus several video games, toys, and other merchandise. It won the Academy Award for Best Makeup.
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” will be Burton’s first film to debut at Venice since “Corpse Bride,” the stop-motion animation project he co-directed with Mike Johnson. (As it happens, Burton’s work does not regularly debut at festivals. The only others to do so were “Ed Wood” at the New York Film Festival, and “Frankenweenie” and “Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children” at Austin’s Fantastic Fest.) Venice, the oldest festival of them all—from 1932 to 1942 the top prize was, indeed, the Mussolini Cup—tends to breathe the rarified air of prestige cinema, but it does make unexpected moves from time to time. In 2019, it awarded “Joker” the top prize and Joaquin Phoenix the Best Actor award, laying the foundation for its good showing at the Oscars.
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