Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is set to open the 81st Venice Film Festival

VENICE, Italy (AP) — The 81st Venice International Film Fair kicked off its 12th edition Tuesday. Venice Film Festival Hollywood action kicks off with the premiere of Beetlejuice on Wednesday night at the Lido.

For the sequel, Tim Burton reunited with many of the main cast members from the 1988 horror-comedy, including Michael Keaton as the ogre Catherine O’Hara, and Winona Ryder as Lydia, now the mother of her grouchy teen, played by Jenna Ortega.

“I’m not making a big sequel for the money,” Burton said a few hours before the film’s premiere, with his cast and crew in tow. “I wanted to make this movie for very personal reasons.”

He said it was because he had become disillusioned with the film industry over the past few years. Beetlejuice was the push he needed to fall in love with the industry again.

“I just realized that if I was going to do anything again, I just wanted to do it from my heart. Something I wanted to do,” Burton said. “It’s kind of like the character of Lydia. Sometimes your life takes a little turn, and you go down a different path. I kind of lost myself.”

The film comes 36 years after audiences first met the Dietz family. Although the original Beetlejuice was a huge hit, becoming the 10th highest-grossing film of 1988, and remains a beloved film, Burton said he never understood why it was so successful. In fact, he didn’t even watch it to prepare for this film. He remembered its spirit all too well.

“There are very few opportunities to be involved in something that you can say is 100 percent original and unique,” Keaton joked about his character’s development.

“I think my character has become more mature,” Keaton said. “As sweet and sensitive as she was in the first film, I think she’s become more delicate and sensitive in this one.”

“Beetlejuice,” which opens in theaters around the world next week from Warner Bros., may be one of the studio’s biggest films, but it was made with a cohesive, improvisational energy that extended from the actors to the crew, who often built the puppets on the spot.

“It’s not going to win any Academy Awards for Best Special Effects. It doesn’t matter. It’s part of the DNA of the project,” Burton said with a laugh.

The film follows Lydia (Ryder), now the host of a cheap ghost-hunting TV show, her stepmother Delia (O’Hara) and Astrid (Ortega), as they return to the old Winter River house after Charles’s death. Astrid is hesitant: she’s as volatile as Lydia was as a teenager, but unlike her mother, she doesn’t believe in ghosts.

“I was a huge fan of the first one,” said Ortega, who met Burton while working on the hit Netflix series “Wednesday.” “He’s someone I trust very much.”

Ryder, who was 15 when she first played Lydia, found the sequel experience very similar even more than 30 years later.

“It was a very special experience, the first time, and just being able to go back to it was a dream come true,” Ryder said. “My love and trust for Tim runs deep. There’s a sense of fun where you can try things and you know that if it’s bad he won’t use it… You feel completely safe and free as well.”

In addition to Ortega, the new Beetlejuice universe includes Justin Theroux, who plays Lydia’s boyfriend and manager, Willem Dafoe as a dead cop/actor, and Monica Bellucci as a soul-sucking ghost seeking revenge on Beetlejuice, her ex-lover.

Theroux noted that the fun atmosphere on the set was present without the “normal downward pressure of a studio movie”.

Everything about Beetlejuice was special to Burton, from the music to the references and tributes to Italian and Spanish cinema and the “stupid movies” he loved.

“It was about getting back to the things I love to do, the way I love to do them, the people I love to do them with. I realized that was the only way to be successful. I had to love doing it. It didn’t matter how it ended. I just had fun and loved doing it with all these people,” Burton said. “It’s like a weird family movie.”

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” premieres at the festival out of competition, early in the 10 busy days in Lido, Which will soon be packed with movie stars, from George Clooney and Brad Pitt, to Lady Gaga and Angelina Jolie.

The Venice Film Festival runs until September 7.