From nostalgia for the original movie to Jenna Ortega’s rising star power, there are many reasons why Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has performed so well at the box office. Released 36 years after the original movie, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice sees Tim Burton back in the director’s chair, Michael Keaton back in the role of Betelgeuse, Winona Ryder back in the role of Lydia Deetz, and Catherine O’Hara back in the role of her wicked stepmother Delia. Like many legacy sequels, it revolves around the next generation of characters as Lydia’s teenage daughter Astrid, played by Ortega, takes her own trip to the afterlife.
Since hitting theaters on September 6, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has been a massive box office hit. In its opening weekend, the sequel grossed a whopping $145.4 million worldwide, consisting of $110 million at the domestic box office and $35.4 million from international markets. This means that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has nearly doubled the entire lifetime gross of the original movie in just three days. It’s the number-one movie in the world. But how did it become so successful? There are a few reasons why Beetlejuice Beetlejuice had such a huge opening weekend.
10 A Lot Of People Have Nostalgia For The Original Beetlejuice
Beetlejuice Is One Of Tim Burton’s Most Iconic Films
Although it wasn’t a massive box office success on its initial release, the original Beetlejuice has become a beloved cult classic. As a family-friendly haunted house movie, Beetlejuice is one of the first forays into the horror genre for many young movie fans, so it holds a special place in their hearts. Nostalgia is a great selling tool in today’s film industry; it’s the reason a Beetlejuice sequel exists in the first place.
Warner Bros. capitalized on this nostalgia cleverly in the marketing for the sequel. From Danny Elfman’s iconic theme to the famous lettering in the title logo to the recurring imagery of the model town in the Maitlands’ attic, the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice trailers were filled with familiar motifs from the original film. Anyone with a nostalgic love of the original film was guaranteed to buy a ticket for the sequel.
9 Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Didn’t Have Much Competition At The Box Office
A Slow September Weekend At The Cinema
The biggest obstacle a movie can face at the box office is stiff competition from other movies. Last year, the Haunted Mansion reboot came and went without making a splash because Disney released it just one week after Barbenheimer, when audiences were still rushing out to see Barbie and Oppenheimer. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice didn’t have this problem, because it was the only major release this past weekend. Recent releases like Borderlands and The Crow have crashed and burned.
The summer’s two biggest hits, Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine, are still going strong several weeks after their initial release, but neither of them is performing well enough to dethrone a newcomer. Alien: Romulus has had very good legs, but as an R-rated movie, it targets a slightly different demographic than Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice faced very little competition.
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8 Jenna Ortega Is A Big Draw For Younger Viewers
Ortega Is Becoming One Of The Most Popular Actors In Hollywood
While there’s plenty of nostalgia for the original Beetlejuice, it’s mostly among older viewers. A lot of younger viewers don’t watch movies from the 20th century. But even those viewers had a reason to check out Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, because Jenna Ortega is one of the biggest stars of Gen Z. Wednesday is one of Netflix’s most popular shows and the Scream films have established Ortega as both a scream queen and a bona fide movie star.
Previous legacy sequels to ‘80s classics like The Flash and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny have underperformed, because they only catered to the older fan base of the original films and not to younger viewers. But by including Ortega in a major role, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice appealed to that younger demographic. Those younger viewers showed up for Wednesday Addams.
7 Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Had A Great Marketing Campaign
The Trailers Got Audiences Hyped For The Movie
For the past few weeks, it’s been nearly impossible to go outside or go online and not see some kind of marketing for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. The trailers have been plastered all over the internet, the posters have been plastered all over major cities, and the cast has been out doing plenty of interviews to promote the film. Warner Bros. created a lot of hype and awareness around this movie.
Recent films like The Fall Guy and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga have bombed at the box office, despite having A-list star power in the cast and popular I.P. in the title, because they’ve had subpar marketing campaigns. If studios want audiences to come out and see their movies, they need to know about them, so they need good marketing. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice had that in spades.
6 It’s The Perfect Time Of Year For A Spooky Movie
Tis The Season
While it’s not quite the Halloween season yet, the summer months are over and the fall months are underway. The days are getting shorter and darker, which puts audiences in a gloomier mood for a gloomier movie. Bright, colorful, action-packed blockbusters like Deadpool & Wolverine, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, and Bad Boys: Ride or Die thrive in the summer. But in the fall, grimmer movies take over.
By arriving in early September, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has gotten ahead of the Halloween horror rush. In late October, it’ll have to compete with a bunch of new horror movies and even older horror movies getting re-released to coincide with Halloween. Now, by the time Smile 2, Terrifier 3, and Azrael come along, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will have been out for a few weeks and already made the bulk of its box office gross.
5 Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Is An Unofficial Follow-Up To Wednesday
Wednesday Was A Massive Netflix Hit
Ortega’s presence isn’t the only reason why Wednesday fans are showing up to watch Beetlejuice Beetlejuice; it’s the whole vibe that Burton and his writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar bring to the table. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice feels like a spiritual successor to Wednesday. Like Wednesday, the Beetlejuice sequel combines a macabre horror story with a relatable teen drama. They threw in a romantic subplot in which Ortega’s character falls in love and lets her guard down as a parallel to Wednesday.
And not only that, in the climactic musical number, Ortega does some unconventional dance moves that recall Wednesday’s iconic dance sequence. Officially, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a sequel to Beetlejuice. But unofficially, it’s just as much of a follow-up to Wednesday. For fans of Wednesday, this movie makes the interminable three-year wait for season 2 a little easier.
4 Winona Ryder & Catherine O’Hara’s TV Roles Have Made Them More Famous Than Ever
It’s Great To See Them On The Big Screen Again
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While Ortega is the most current celebrity to appear in the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice cast, her co-stars are still relevant, too, thanks to their recent TV roles. Ryder was one of the biggest stars of the ‘90s, but she took a break from acting in the 2000s. If a Beetlejuice sequel had been made then, there wouldn’t be many contemporary moviegoers who knew about her. But in 2016, Ryder got a much-needed comeback with the role of Joyce Byers in Stranger Things.
O’Hara got a similar career renaissance with the fan-favorite role of Moira Rose in Schitt’s Creek. Her roles in Christopher Guest movies had already made her royalty to comedy nerds, but Schitt’s Creek made O’Hara a globally recognizable icon. Stranger Things and Schitt’s Creek have made Ryder and O’Hara more famous today than ever before.
Related Why Lydia Couldn’t See The Ghost Of Astrid’s Father In Beetlejuice 2
Lydia is capable of communicating with ghosts in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, yet she can’t seem to reach Astrid’s father. Here’s what we know.
3 Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Had A Relatively Modest Budget
Tim Burton Knows How To Do More With Less
One of the main reasons why a lot of last year’s tentpole movies disappointed at the box office, from Fast X to Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, was that their budgets had ballooned to around $300 million. Going off the usual rule of thumb that movies need to make 2.5 times their budget to turn a profit, this put their break-even point at around $750 million. This meant that even movies with an impressive gross were considered failures.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice carries a more modest $100 million budget, so it doesn’t need to gross $750 million to break even – just $250 million will do the trick. If it had cost $300 million like a lot of recent blockbusters, then its $110 million opening weekend would be considered an underperformance. But since Warner Bros. didn’t overspend on it, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is well on its way to profitability.
2 Audiences Are Starved For A Good Comedy
Are Movies Getting Less Funny?
For the past decade or so, the comedy movie genre has slowly died out. Most straightforward comedies have retreated to streaming, where the filmmakers are unburdened with selling tickets and, as a result, are much lazier. Studios are taking fewer and fewer risks on big-budget comedies for theatrical release, because comedies are a tough sell internationally. But despite what the market dictates, audiences still love going out to a movie theater and laughing along with a crowd at a good comedy.
The three biggest movies of the year – Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, and Despicable Me 4 – all have strong comedic elements. Like its predecessor, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is as much of a comedy as it is a horror movie. And like its predecessor, it plays really well to a big crowd at a theater.
1 Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Has Received Positive Reviews
Both Critics & Audiences Seem To Love It
If Beetlejuice Beetlejuice had been panned by critics, it might’ve been a different story. But it’s a genuinely good movie, and the critical reception has reflected that. No one involved in this movie phoned it in for an easy payday; Burton pulls out all the cinematic stops to recapture the fun, creepy feel of the original, and Keaton, Ryder, and O’Hara all commit wholeheartedly to reprising their iconic roles. The critics picked up on that and responded enthusiastically to it.
The sequel has a “fresh” score of 76% on Rotten Tomatoes, indicating a mostly positive response from critics. It’s not quite as high as the original’s score of 83%, but it’s not far off, either. Anyone who was on the fence about checking out Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will surely have been swayed by the positive reviews.
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PG-13ComedySupernaturalFantasyHorror
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is the sequel to the original Tim Burton classic that starred Michael Keaton and Wynona Rider in a horror-comedy that involved ghosts trying to scare off new homebuyers from taking their house. The sequel brings back Michael Keaton as the hilarious and sleazy ghost with selfish intentions, now joined by Jenna Ortega in a new role.
Director Tim Burton Release Date September 6, 2024 Studio(s) KatzSmith Productions , Tim Burton Productions , Warner Bros. Pictures , Plan B Entertainment Distributor(s) Warner Bros. Pictures Writers Alfred Gough , Miles Millar , Mike Vukadinovich , Seth Grahame-Smith , Michael McDowell , Larry Wilson Cast Michael Keaton , Jenna Ortega , Winona Ryder , Monica Bellucci , Willem Dafoe , Justin Theroux , Catherine O’Hara Runtime 104 Minutes Main Genre Comedy Expand