If the good folks at Warner Bros. Discovery had their way, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice would have been a streaming exclusive for Max instead of the box office smash it’s become. In a new report from The New York Times (via Yahoo! News), it’s revealed that it was director Tim Burton‘s agent that paved the way for the sequel to his 1988 classic to be released theatrically, but it wasn’t until he managed to wrangle the budget which had everyone at Warner Bros. sweating.
According to Pamela Abdy, co-chair of Warner Brothers Motion Picture Group, the idea was pitched to Burton to make Beetlejuice Beetlejuice as a streaming offering early on in its development when the budget was hovering around $147 million dollars. Burton, as she remarked, scoffed at the idea.
That was never going to work for Tim. You’re talking about a visionary artist whose films demand to be seen on a big screen.
That being said, the last time Burton had a hit was in 2010 with Alice in Wonderland, which went on to earn more than a billion dollars at the box office. In the years since, his five releases have all underperformed, something that didn’t exactly cast the director in the best of light, and gave those in charge reason to pause that a sequel to a 35-year-old movie would find success. As such, they told Burton that the only way Beetlejuice Beetlejuice would ever get a theatrical release is if he managed to get the budget under $100 million, something he hadn’t been able to do since 2014’s Big Eyes.
The ballooning costs were mostly due in part to cast salaries and producer fees, something that Burton’s agent, Mike Simpson, worked hard to get under control. “Two months went by where every day the movie almost died,” he told The Times. In the end, though, Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, and Jenna Ortega all agreed with Burton that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice needed to be seen on the big screen, and they lowered their up-front salaries in favor of taking a bigger piece of the film’s back end. The director also agreed to a salary reduction if it meant bringing his vision to life for all the world to see in theaters, which brought its total budget down to $99 million.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Has Been a Box Office Smash
Released just 10 days ago on September 6, everyone is laughing all the way to the bank now thanks to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’s box office numbers. It managed to gross $111 million its opening weekend, making it the second-biggest September opening behind Andy Muscietti’s IT Chapter One in 2017. The sequel has since gone on to rake in $264 million in its first couple of weeks, and now sits as the 12th highest-grossing movie of the year thus far, and the biggest hit of Burton’s career behind the aforementioned Alice in Wonderland.
While it will most likely lose its number one spot in theaters this coming weekend thanks to the release of Transformers One, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has already earned enough to break even, and anything brought in from here on out is all profit, proving that Burton and its principal cast made the right call by agreeing to reduced salaries in exchange for a bigger piece of the pie to give the film the theatrical release it rightfully deserved. All that’s left for everyone to do now is to keep cashing those checks as the money rolls in.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
is now playing in theaters from Warner Bros. Pictures.
