“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” trailer confirms death of original character; introduces Willem Dafoe, Monica Bellucci
Plus, stop-motion sandworms!
It looks like we officially know who was in that casket in the first Beetlejuice Beetlejuice trailer.
Warner Bros. revealed a new look at the sequel to 1988's Beetlejuice on Thursday, which confirmed that Jeffrey Jones' Charles Deetz is, in fact, dead at the start of the movie.
Fans speculated as much when the teaser trailer was released and showed Catherine O'Hara's Delia Deetz, Winona Ryder's Lydia Deetz, and Jenna Ortega's Astrid Deetz standing by a grave as a children's church choir sang "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)." Director Tim Burton would not confirm the corpse's identity in an exclusive interview with Entertainment Weekly. "We'll see," he said at the time.
In the trailer, Astrid, Lydia's teen daughter, exclaims, "I can't believe grandpa is dead."
It already seemed unlikely that Jones would reprise his role of Charles in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. The actor retreated from the public eye after he was arrested in 2002 for possession of child pornography and for soliciting a 14-year-old boy to produce sexually explicit photos. Jones pleaded no contest in 2003. He was sentenced to five years probation and ordered to register as a sex offender. Jones was arrested two more times in 2004 and 2010 for failure to update his sex offender status.
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In the first Beetlejuice, Jones' Charles was a former real-estate developer who moved his family (O'Hara's Delia, Ryder's Lydia) from New York to a home in Winter River, Conn., after the previous owners, the Maitlands (Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis), died in a car accident.
Parisa Taghizadeh/Warner Bros.; Everett Jeffrey Jones' Charles Deetz dies at the start of 'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice'
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (in theaters Sept. 6) now sees Delia and Lydia move back to the house with Astrid after Charles' unexpected death. When Astrid discovers the model of the town in the attic and the portal to the Afterlife is accidentally opened, Michael Keaton's chaotic "bio-exorcist" Beetlejuice comes back into the mix. In a classic dynamic between a parent and a defiant child, Ryder tells Astrid to never say Beetlejuice's name, to which Astrid taunts her mom by saying the name not once, not twice, but thrice. The rest is history.
The trailer also delivers first looks at Willem Dafoe's Wolf Jackson, a B-list movie actor who died and became a cop in the Afterlife; Monica Belluci's Delores, Beetlejuice's zombified but fabulous wife; and more familiar creatures, like the stop-motion-animated sandworm.
"The living, the dead. Can they coexist? That's what we're here to find out," Lydia says.
Watch the new Beetlejuice Beetlejuice trailer above.
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