First, we’re firmly in the David Zaslav era of Warner Bros. history. If you’ve been paying attention over the past couple of years, you know that’s not a good thing: He’s shown active hostility to artists during his tenure, and as long as he serves as the company’s CEO, there’s always a chance that any movie under the WB umbrella, including fully completed ones, could get mothballed as a tax write-off and never see the light of day.
Second, and more importantly in this case, is the Tim Burton of it all. The director’s early career run is legendary, but I think a strong case could be made that he hasn’t made a great movie in more than 20 years. I’m one of the few defenders of his 2014 movie “Big Eyes,” a film that proved he was able to step outside of his comfort zone, but unfortunately performed so poorly that he immediately retreated back into it and has not ventured out again since. But films like “Dumbo,” “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children,” “Frankenweenie,” “Dark Shadows,” “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” and the especially atrocious “Alice in Wonderland” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” have deeply soured his reputation. Will a long-gestating sequel to a 36-year-old film really be the film that vaults him back to greatness? History has given us plenty of reasons to be skeptical.
Then again, Michael Keaton is returning to play Beetlejuice again and seemingly had several opportunities to do so in the past, so maybe this iteration of the script was worth the wait for him. Fingers crossed.
We spoke about “Beetlejuice 2” and a ton of other films in today’s episode of the /Film Daily podcast, which was all about our most anticipated movies of 2024. Give it a listen:
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