Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Means Tim Burton Has Finally Recovered From $1Bn Disappointment That Led To His Worst-Ever Decade

The performance of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice shows that Tim Burton has finally recovered from the billion-dollar movie that sent his career into a tailspin. Burton is a filmmaker who came to prominence in the mid-1980s with his debut feature Pee-wee’s BIg Adventure and is best known for his gleefully macabre design sensibility that is showcased in titles such as 1988’s Beetlejuice, 1990’s Edward Scissorhands, and 2007’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. In his career so far, he has been nominated for two Oscars. Both were for Best Animated Feature, for 2005’s Corpse Bride and 2012’s Frankenweenie.

Burton’s most recent project is Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the legacy sequel to his horror-comedy hit, which sees him re-teaming with Wednesday‘s Jenna Ortega as well as legacy stars Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara, all reprising their roles from the original movie. The Beetlejuice Beetlejuice box office has so far reached a whopping $449.1 million against a budget of $100 million. At the time of writing it is the seventh highest-grossing movie of 2024, behind the hits Kung Fu Panda 4, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Dune: Part Two, Despicable Me 4, Deadpool & Wolverine, and Inside Out 2.

Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland Was Part Of A Bigger Career Shift & Deeper Decline

The Disney Remake Was A Hit, But A Portent of Doom

The biggest turning point leading into the decline of Tim Burton’s career was the release of 2010’s Alice in Wonderland. The live-action Disney remake, which received a Rotten Tomatoes splat with a 50% Tomatometer score, nevertheless became a massive box office hit. It grossed $1.025 billion against its roughly $200 million budget, quickly becoming the highest-grossing movie of the director’s entire career and remaining so through the time of writing.

Alice in Wonderland
starred Mia Wasikowska as Alice, Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen, Anne Hathaway as the White Queen, and Alan Rickman as the Caterpillar.

Alice in Wonderland did not necessarily directly mark Burton’s shift from offbeat auteur to studio gun-for-hire. His 2001 Planet of the Apes remake and the 2005 Roald Dahl adaptation Charlie and the Chocolate Factory saw him building up to his work on the 2010 title. However, as the most successful of these movies and the one that feels the least attached to Burton’s inimitable style, Alice became the true marker of the career downturn that was to come for Burton in the ensuing years as he chased its success within a limiting studio framework.

The 2010s Was Tim Burton’s Worst Decade

He Suffered Both Critically And Commercially

Alice in Wonderland established the approach for Tim Burton movies of the 2010s, which had more or less immediate diminishing returns. While many of the projects he chose were seemingly good fits for his iconic style, the decade saw him becoming more of a brand than a filmmaker, capturing his style without including his unique voice and heart, with the exception of his stop-motion passion project Frankenweenie, the origins of which date back to his early career in the 1980s.

2012’s
Frankenweenie
is a remake and expansion of Burton’s original 1984 short film of the same name.

This slow deflation of Burton’s career culminated in the release of 2019’s Dumbo, a Disney live-action remake that was a clear attempt to recreate the success of Alice in Wonderland that was a failure and led Burton to declare that he would prefer not to work with Disney again. Per IndieWire, he described the feeling of making the production was like “working in this horrible big circus” and that the movie’s themes became semi-autobiographical. Below, see a full breakdown of the critical and commercial reception of Burton’s post-Alice movies of the 2010s:

As the table reflects, Burton’s movies were erratically received through the 2010s. While he hit an early high point with the consecutive releases of Frankenweenie and Big Eyes, which were quite well received and made decent box office grosses, the remainder of his movies had middling to outright poor reception. Because a movie’s break-even point is typically two-and-a-half-times its production budget, it seems unlikely that either Dark Shadows or Dumbo actually turned a profit, while Miss Peregrine just barely crossed the threshold, which may explain why a sequel never materialized.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Is Tim Burton Reclaiming Himself

His Creativity Has Come Roaring Back

While Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a property that exists because of the commercial interests of studios, the movie is nevertheless a return to form for Burton, bursting with the filmmaker’s inimitable unique spirit to a degree that has not been seen in full in any of his movies since at least Frankenweenie. In fact, Burton seems wildly creative and engaged to a fault, as there are almost too many ideas in the movie, as if he has 15 years of pent-up material ready to be brought to the screen.

Burton is really only using the original [
Beetlejuice
] as a jumping-off point…

Regardless, the director seems to be born from a genuine interest in making a pure Tim Burton movie rather than a shallow facsimile of movies that came before. This is the case even though its existence is a transparent nostalgia bid, as Burton is really only using the original as a jumping-off point to stuff the screen with new ideas, expanding the franchise’s universe with bold brush strokes. Critics and audiences are responding well to this approach, as Beetlejuice Beetlejuice reviews have earned the movie a Certified Fresh 77% score on Rotten Tomatoes alongside an even better 79% audience score.

Can Tim Burton Build On Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’s Success?

His Next Movie Could Cement His Creative Rejuvenation

It ultimately remains to be seen if the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice release will be followed by further success for Burton. Outside of the Netflix series Wednesday, he has no future projects that have been officially announced. While a third Beetlejuice would likely be a commercial success, his trepidation about the idea shows that he seems to still be in a mode where creativity is key, which could work to propel his next movie, be it an original or an IP-driven project.

While it could be difficult for him to get an original project to become a hit at the level of the legacy sequel, the success of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Wednesday suggest that there is still an appetite for “true” Tim Burton projects. Per Variety, the director himself even openly acknowledged the fact that the movie feels like a return to form, saying that the production was “reenergizing” and that he appreciated “getting back to… things I love doing.” If this spirit carries on to whatever comes next, it could very well evoke that same sensibility and become a similar success.

Source: IndieWire & Variety