After over three decades in purgatory, the afterlife’s sleaziest demon is rearing his manky, mouldy head once more in Tim Burton’s BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE. It’s showtime…

"HELL, YEAH"

Betelgeuse is pacing. Guttural grunts tumble out of his mouth. He’s alone, in the zone, stalking back and forth, oblivious to the surrounding studio activity, the cameras, the crew, the lights.

Betelgeuse. It’s him. The black-and-white striped suit, in dire need of a dry-clean. The lecherous eyes, glaring out from blackened pits. The matted green hair, unwashed. The broken, yellowed teeth, unbrushed. It could be 1988, when Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice (the title a more accessible take on the name) was gifted to unsuspecting cinemagoers like a freakish jack-in-the-box, but somehow it’s 2023, and Betelgeuse, a demon inhabited by Michael Keaton —or is it the other way round? —looks,extra wrinkles aside, the same. Betelgeuse was always somewhat ageless, stuck in time, because he’s dead. Kind of.

“Hell, yeah.” We’re in-between takes at Leavesden Studios, and Keaton is practising his lines, working on inflection, intonation, breathing life back into the filthy bio-exorcist. The world of Beetlejuice is surreal, but not half as surreal as it is for Empire to be in it, standing a few feet away from the ghost with the most in all his grimy glory. And more ghouls are to come: later we’re introduced to undead unfortunates biding their time in the afterlife, poor souls who died horribly and are now stuck like that. Afigure skater, cut in half. Aman with a baseball bat sticking out of his eye. An old lady who died alone at home, only to have her insides gnawed on by cats, which remains the situation. We met a handful in Beetlejuice, but there are many more dead people this time around. “Well, you know… It’s 35 years later, of course there are more dead people,” laughs Burton when we bring it up.

The director has been trying to summon Beetlejuice again since around 1990, with various scripts having been written before spluttering away. Finally, though, three-and-a-half decades later, the resurrection is real. Although, as Empire discovers, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice isn’t as much about Betelgeuse as one might presume. It isn’t about death as much as it’s about life.

It’s about… time. To some extent, it’s about Burton himself, via Winona Ryder’s returning black sheep Lydia. What does happen when a goth grows up?

Ryder can barely believe this film is here. When we speak to her this April, she is emotionally raw, finding it difficult to articulate how she’s feeling. “I struggle to find the words,” she says, having been stumbling over her thoughts for a while. She explains her state of mind. “This is… you’re the first person I’ve talked to about this. It’s just one of the most special experiences that I’ve ever had. The fact that we’re coming back to it, it’s... It’s beyond.”

Michael Keaton and Tim Burton on set plotting more macabre mayhem;

Also returning are Catherine O’Hara as Delia and Winona Ryder as Lydia, here with newbies Jenna Ortega as Astrid (second left) and Justin Theroux as Rory (right);