Warner Bros. has released a new trailer for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel to the 1998 Tim Burton classic, and as Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) says from the outset, “Be warned. It’s intense.”
This is the second trailer for the Beetlejuice sequel, but it’s almost twice as long as the first. The two-minute preview takes fans back into Winter River, where the Deetz family returns home after the death of a family member.
Lydia gives fans a quick refresher on the first movie in a voiceover, saying to her daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega): “When I was a teenager, a trickster demon terrorized our entire family and tried to force me to marry him. I believed he was gone forever until you found this in the attic.”
It’s then revealed that Astrid found the portal to the afterlife and, naturally, Beetlejuice’s name is uttered three times, summoning the devious ghost portrayed by Michael Keaton.
“The juice is loose,” he declares as chaos and hilarity ensue. The trailer shows explosions, an airplane in peril and a variety of otherworldly characters taking over Winter River.
In addition to Keaton, 72, and Ryder, 52, Catherine O’Hara will also reprise her role from the original. Justin Theroux, Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci and Ben Gorman join Ortega as newcomers to the franchise.
“To bring Beetlejuice back — of all of the stories — is so good because people need to revisit weird, strange, off-putting stories again,” Ortega, 21, said in an interview with Vanity Fair. “We need to introduce the younger generation that’s always on the phone to new artistic and creative ideas. The weirder you get with it, the more people you can get to see it, I think will probably do a lot for film in general.”
According to Keaton, fans almost did not get the chance to see Beetlejuice return.
“It took a while to get there and I didn’t really think we were gonna do it and didn’t want to do it, various times [in the] last few years, but it was more fun than the other one,” he told Entertainment Tonight.
He also had plenty of praise to offer Ortega, who has made her name as an actress in horror.
“Oh, man, she’s good, she’s just got it, you know? She’s got the tone,” he said. “She showed up and just immediately knew what the tone was and just slipped in like she does every day. She’s really special.”
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice hits theaters on September 6, and its title begs the question: If a third movie follows the same naming style, will he be summoned into our world?
