Michael Keaton transformed into Beetlejuice ‘like he was possessed by a demon’

After more than 30 years of absence of the character, Michael Keaton had doubts about the possibility of reuniting with Beetlejuice for the next Tim Burton sequel, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.

“There’s been so much merchandising that I had to go back to where it all started,” Keaton said. Empire. “I had to ask myself, ‘What was my unusual imagination thinking when I was developing it in the first place?’ Instead of seeing a coffee cup or golf club cover (adorned with Betelgeuse’s face).

The character is no longer just a strange figment of his imagination; It is now emblematic of the Tim Burton canon – even the canon of cinema itself.

“The omnipresence of Beetlejuice as a character in culture has created its own challenges. “It was fucking weird,” Keaton admitted to Empire. “To be honest with you – I’m very frank – it was off-putting to look at and say, ‘I don’t want to be like all these little thingsWhore that – what is the thing that triggered this?’

According to Burton and Keaton’s co-stars, the actor seems to have found it.

“It was like he was possessed by a demon, because he went back there,” Burton said. “It was mad“, remembers Catherine O’Hara. “Mad.” Jenna Ortega put it this way: “It was like an animal with a gun had just walked into the room. Seeing him physically change and appear and Michael Keaton disappear, and dealing with this guy from Beetlejuice… It blew my mind.

Keaton, at least, is happy with the film itself.

“I love it,” he says. “I love this stuff. And I don’t (usually) talk like that. I shameless love it. It wasn’t easy to pull off, and I think we did it in spades.