Warner Bros. unveiled the first full trailer for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice this past Thursday, and it gave us a much better idea of what to expect from Tim Burton's long-awaited sequel.
The teaser begins with Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) returning to Winter River with her mother Delia (Catherine O'Hara) and daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) for her father's funeral (confirming reports that Jeffrey Jones' Charles Deetz has been killed off), when memories of her encounter with lecherous demon Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) resurface.
Lydia explains what happened all those years ago to Astrid, who proceeds to say the Ghost with the Most's name three times, summoning him back to the land of the living.
The trailer features our first look at Betelgeuse's ex-wife Delores (Monica Bellucci), and one quick shot reveals that she is missing a finger. This is almost certainly a call-back to an infamous scene from the original movie, which saw the duplicitous Bio-Exorcist attempt to force Lydia to marry him.
After taking a finger out of his pocket with the ring still on it, the ghost tells his reluctant bride to be that the previous owner of the ring (and the finger) meant "nothing at all" to him, before discarding the severed digit.
Though there might be a bit more to it, this most likely explains why Delores and Willem Dafoe's afterlife cop character, Wolf Jackson, are trying to track Betelgeuse down in the trailer.
Check out the trailer at the link below along with some character posters.
"He just got back into it," Burton said of Keaton's decision to reprise the role after so many years in a recent interview. "It was kind of scary for somebody who was maybe not that overly interested in doing it. It was such a beautiful thing for me to see all the cast, but he, sort of like demon possession, just went right back into it."
"Unless it felt right, he had no burning desire to do it," Burton added. "I think we all felt the same way. It only made sense if it had an emotional hook."
"After an unexpected family tragedy, three generations of the Deetz family return to the small Vermont town of Winter River. Paranormal empath, Lydia Deetz, begins to see the lecherous demon Beetlejuice, who haunted her as a teenager. His plans to finally marry Lydia are given extra urgency when his dead wife comes to life and begins to stalk the Afterlife hunting for him. Meanwhile, Lydia’s teenage daughter embarks on a romance with a local teen."
Wednesday creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar penned the script.
Beetlejuice 2 is set to release in theaters on Sept. 6, 2024.