Tim Burton says Wednesday rekindled his career: ‘I could have retired’

Tim Burton has revealed he considered retiring from filmmaking after the release of his 2019 movie Dumbo, but that his positive experience working on the hit Netflix series Wednesday reinvigorated him enough to return with the forthcoming Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

The horror comedy sequel, which sees Winona Ryder reprise her role as Lydia Deetz from the original 1988 film, is set to be released on September 6.

Speaking to Variety Burton, 65, said that after the release of Dumbo, he wasn’t sure whether he would continue making films: “I really didn’t know. I thought that could have been it, really. I could have retired, or become… well, I wouldn’t have become an animator again, that’s over.”

The Mars Attacks director said that it was Wednesday that “reconnected me to making things.”

The Netflix series, which is a spinoff from the supernatural Addams Family series, was created by screenwriters Alfred Gough and Miles Millar with Burton joining as a director and executive producer. “We went off to Romania and it felt like it was a creative health camp,” recalled Burton. “It went so well.”

Wednesday was a huge hit for Netflix. After just one week of release, it had been streamed for a total of 341.2 million hours, beating a record previously held by Stranger Things.

A much-anticipated second season is expected to arrive next year and is already breaking records.

Meanwhile, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will reunite Ryder with Michael Keaton, as the titular ghoul, and Schitt’s Creek star Catherine O’Hara who returns as Lydia’s mother Delia Deetz.

Newcomers to the cast include Monica Bellucci, who plays Beetlejuice’s wife, Willem Dafoe, who plays the sinister Wolf Jackson, and Justin Theroux as a character named Rory.

House of the Dragon’s Arthur Conti also joins the cast to make his feature film debut.

Earlier this year, Burton revealed that the sequel was inspired by his own journey “from cool teenager to lame adult”.

He told Entertainment Weekly that getting Keaton back into the iconic costume and makeup was “a weird out-of-body experience”.

“He just got back into it,” Burton said. “It was kind of scary for somebody who was maybe not that overly interested in doing it. It was such a beautiful thing for me to see all the cast, but he, sort of like demon possession, just went right back into it.”

He added that he and Keaton had discussed a sequel for years, but that “unless it felt right, he had no burning desire to do it.”

Burton continued: “I think we all felt the same way. It only made sense if it had an emotional hook.”

He said they found that hook in Ortega’s character Astrid.

“I so identified with the Lydia character, but then you get to all these years later, and you take your own journey, going from cool teenager to lame adult, back and forth again,” explained Burton. “That made it emotional, gave it a foundation. So that was the thing that really truly got me into it.”