Tim Burton has been vocal about how making his new Beetlejuice movie has revitalized his love of making movies, and Warner Bros. has had their love of making money off movies all along, which explains this fast-tracked project hoping to keep the money train rolling in between Beetlejuice and the new Joker movies’ release dates.
Secretly shot simultaneously alongside Beetlejuice, this latest addition to the very timely and well-regarded multiverse craze features a mash-up of all of Burton’s hit films at Warner Bros. over the years- when Beetlejuice’s (Michael Keaton) antics have once again led to him being consumed by a Saturnian sandworm everyone expects him to manifest in the waiting room in purgatory like always. When he doesn’t and foul play is suspected the denizens of the afterlife need to call in one of the top detectives to investigate. And who is a better detective than Batman (Michael Keaton)? The only problem- Batman’s not dead yet so how can he solve a crime on the other side?
Luckily, there is someone who has crossed over who has always tickled Bruce Wayne’s funny bone, and is thus charged with returning to the land of the living to convince him to kill himself and take the case- Pee-Wee Herman (corpse of Paul Reubens). Since travel between the land of the living and the dead is heavily regulated, Pee-Wee will be unable to vocalize the request and must remain in corpse form the entire time he is trying to recruit Batman, leading to some hilarious Weekend at Bernie’s-esque hijinks as his corpse seems to appear at random around the Batcave and in the Batmobile clutching post-it notes to try and clue in the World’s Greatest Detective.
Will Batman hang up the cowl fighting the villains of Gotham to visit the hereafter to solve a mystery? Why is anyone concerned about a missing manic sex pest anyway? And who would want to perpetrate a crime against the foremost Bio-exorcist? Spoiler alert- it’s Johnny Depp. It’s always Johnny Depp- maybe it’s his Willy Wonka, maybe it’s Sweeney Tood who wanted to give Beetlejuice a trim and make him into a funky pie- who knows?