Following a rather successful second outing last year, Warner Bros has given Beetlejuice 3 the go ahead.
After waiting several decades for a follow-up to 1988’s Beetlejuice, it looks like fans of the series won’t have to wait that long for the next one. Last year’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice made some serious bank for Warner Bros, and so it appears that a sequel has been quickly commissioned. The news comes via a Deadline interview with Warner Bros co-heads, Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, two executives who have had to weather plenty of speculation about their futures of late.
All of that noise doesn’t seem to have stopped them building up the studio’s future slate, though, and with A Minecraft Movie continuing to gobble up plenty of cash at the box office (it’s now north of half a billion dollars), they have a sizeable hit to point to as continued proof of their successes.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was another one of those successes, earning $450m at the global box office from a reported production budget of $100m. Even with the film’s sizeable marketing outlay taken into consideration, that kind of a haul would no doubt have swelled the studio’s coffers. And given the ups and downs the studio faced in 2024, you can’t blame Abdy and De Luca for going back to director Tim Burton and getting him to sign on the dotted line again.
Burton’s involvement isn’t officially confirmed, by the way, but you can expect an announcement at some point. De Luca says “the ink might not be dry on the deals yet, but [it should be happening] imminently.” We can’t imagine that the studio would try to put another Beetlejuice film into development without Burton – that would be an exercise in futility – so it’s surely just a matter of time before his involvement is made official.
De Luca and Abdy also use the interview to stress that they are reviving more of the studio’s big names: The Matrix to Practical Magic, Gremlins and Goonies all set for revivals.
Read more: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice review | A macabre, wickedly funny ode to creativity
“Drew Goddard, writing and directing The Matrix. Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and Jay Roach, with their Oceans Eleven prequel; Matt Reeves as producer, working with Marvel’s Werewolf By Night director Michael Giacchino on a remake of our library title Them; Andy Serkis directing Gollum. Others we can’t talk about yet,” says De Luca, clearly using the interview to stress that plenty of titles with the potential for huge success are on the way.
If you ask this writer, it’s not Warner Bros’ slate that’s the problem, more its budgets and marketing strategies. If you look at some of its misses from the last 12 months – films like Mickey 17 and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, you have to wonder whether these films could have been made more cheaply and marketed more effectively.
We’re far from the glory days of Sue Kroll’s stewardship of marketing at the studio, and it especially seems to be a major thorn in the company’s side these days. Look at how the marketing blitz for James Gunn’s Superman film doesn’t seem to be hitting quite like it should, and you have further evidence that the studio has problems connecting its films with the cinema-going public.
We’ll bring you more on (what is destined to be called) Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – or maybe Threetlejuice? – as we hear it.
