The Instant Expert's Guide to Tim Burton

Even if you miss the opening credits, you'll soon know you're watching a Tim Burton film. Not only is the Californian's visual style so distinctive, he also has a handful of pet themes that echo through what are often outsider tales. So, join Cinema Paradiso for an Instant Expert's Guide that reflects on four decades of cinematic experimentation and excellence.

Tim Burton tends not to say much. Indeed, former partner Helena Bonham Carter used to call him 'a home for abandoned sentences'. He has an equally quirky view of his work, once saying, 'I treat my films like mutated children… they may have flaws, they may have weird problems, but I still love them.' So, how did such a whimsically eldritch worldview come about?

The Kid From the Cemetery

Timothy Walter Burton was born on 25 August 1958 in Burbank, California. A few miles north-east of Hollywood, the city was home to both Warner Bros and Walt Disney Studios. Yet, it was also the acme of suburbia and Burton never felt entirely at home.

Father Bill had been a minor league baseball player until injury had cut short his career and he had taken a job with the Burbank Parks and Recreation Department. Mother Jean devoted herself to raising Tim and his younger brother, Daniel, although she was also a dab hand at offbeat creations like the Halloween costume she made for Tim to go trick or treating that clearly influenced the look of Jack Skellington in The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993). She later opened a shop selling cat knick-knaks, which is odd because the Burtons were a dog family, thanks to Frosty and Pepe, with the latter being the inspiration for the 1984 short and the 2012 feature, Frankenweenie.

Odd things did happen in the Burton household from time to time. For example, Bill and Jean decided to cover over the large windows in Tim's bedroom, so that he had to climb on to his desk in order to peer through the slits at the garden below and the planes flying over from the nearby airport. No wonder he often took himself off to the Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery at the end of Evergreen Street to enjoy a bit of peace and quiet so that he could think, make up stories and spook himself about the shuffling gravedigger.

Not that Burton spent his entire childhood in isolation after leaving Providencia Elementary School for Burbank High School. He might not have been a particularly academic student, but he played on the water polo team. Moreover, he excelled at practical jokes, once convincing some kids that an alien spaceship had crash-landed in the park and another time tossing some clothes into an empty swimming pool and claiming that a boy had been dissolved in an acid bath.

The young Burton also had a thing for wax museums and the writing of Dr Seuss and Roald Dahl. He also spent hours drawing and painting and once had a sketch posted on the side of the district's bin lorries after he won an anti-litter competition. Encouraging the introspective teenager's talent was art teacher Doris Adams, who also introduced him to film-making, when he participated in a stop-motion project. Among the soundless 8mm pictures that Burton made around this time was The Island of Doctor Agor (1971), which took its inspiration from H.G. Wells's The Island of Dr Moreau, which had been filmed by Erle C. Kenton as The Island of Lost Souls (1932). It would re-emerge under its original title in features directed by Don Taylor in 1977 and John Frankenheimer in 1996. The story of a doomed attempt to adapt this chilling tale can also be rented from Cinema Paradiso on high-quality DVD and Blu-ray in the form of David Gregory's documentary, Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley's Island of Dr Moreau (2014).

Burton played Doctor Agor and filmed on Malibu beach and at the Los Angeles Zoo in order to make the action more authentic. Among the other shorts completed during this burst of adolescent creativity were Prehistoric Caveman, Houdini: The Untold Story (both 1971), Tim's Dreams, Tim (both 1972) and Yes (1974).

Film-making wasn't Burton's only passion, however. He illustrated his own children's book, which he submitted to Disney. The rejection letter positively noted that 'the art is very good. The characters are charming and imaginative, and have sufficient variety to sustain interest.' Eventually, Burton's artwork would go on display in galleries. Indeed, when he was given an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 2009, he was asked to list the films that had influenced him for a series of screenings entitled, 'Tim Burton and the Lurid Beauty of Monsters'.

Several of the titles are available to rent from Cinema Paradiso. So, you can tap into your inner Tim or inspire any budding Burtons in your family by clicking on the links for Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920), F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922), James Whale's Frankenstein, Tod Browning's Dracula (both 1931), Robert Florey's Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), Lew Landers's The Raven (1935), and Christy Cabanne's The Mummy's Hand (1940) and The Mummy’s Tomb (1942).

Burton also cited the influence of Tex Avery cartoons and the unlikely Disney teaming of The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad (1949). His love of sci-fi and horror Bs was represented on the list by Jack Arnold's Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954) and Revenge of the Creature (1955), Edward D. Wood, Jr,'s Bride of the Monster (1955) and Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959), and Mario Bava's Black Sunday (1960). Coming more up to date, the selection was completed by Roger Corman's The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Don Chaffey's Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Jules Bass's Mad Monster Party (1967), Boris Sagal's The Omega Man (1971), William Crain's Scream Blacula Scream (1973), John Guillermin's The Towering Inferno, Mark Robson's Earthquake (both 1974), and Irwin Allen's The Swarm (1978). Don't blame us if you have nightmares!

The Disney Dropout

In 1961, under the auspices of Walt Disney, the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music merged with the Chouinard Art Institute to form the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Santa Clarita. Disney had recruited several animators from the latter institution and hoped that CalArts would become a source of talent that his studio could mine. Burton enrolled to study character animation and was classmates with future collaborator Henry Selick, as well as Rob Minkoff (The Lion King, 1994), Brenda Chapman (Brave, 2012) and Glen Keane, the ace Disney animator who directed Dear Basketball (2017), the short that earned Kobe Bryant the Academy Award for Best Animated Short.

Coming out of himself, Burton had a rich social life outside making such innovative shorts as Doctor of Doom, Stalk of the Celery Monster and King and Octopus (all 1979). On one occasion, he had such a good night at a Halloween party that he woke to find his face stuck to the floor with the ghoulish make-up he had created. He also landed a few notable odd jobs, firstly as an artist on Ralph Bakshi's adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1978) and, then, as a puppeteer on James Frawley's The Muppet Movie (1979).

Drawn mostly in pencil and filmed on 8mm, Stalk of the Celery Monster came to the attention of Walt Disney Productions and Burton was offered the chance to become an apprentice animator. In the course of learning how to be a conceptual artist, a graphic designer, an art director and a storyboard artist, Burton worked on such Disney animations as Ted Berman's The Fox and the Hound (1982) and The Black Cauldron (1985), as well as Steve Lisberger's Tron (1982), which became the first feature to utilise both backlit and computer animation.

Burton soon realised that he was out of sync with the Disney way of doing things. 'My foxes looked like roadkill,' he once claimed, while he later admitted that 'I couldn't even fake the Disney style.' But producer Rick Heinrichs sponsored his six-minute $60,000 stop-motion short, Vincent (1982), which tells of a small boy's obsession with actor Vincent Price. Briefly released alongside Tim Hunter's teenpic, Tex, this monochrome masterpiece delighted Price, who called it 'the most gratifying thing that ever happened. It was immortality - better than a star on Hollywood Boulevard.'

The same year saw Burton join forces with Jerry Rees (who would go on to direct The Marrying Man, 1991) on Luau, a lampoon of such early teenpix as William Asher's Beach Party (1963), whose star, Frankie Avalon, would team with Vincent Price on Norman Taurog's Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1965). Also in 1982, Burton and writer girlfriend Julie Hickson put a Japanese spin on the Grimm fairytale, Hansel and Gretel, for a Disney small-screen special.

In addition to the unrealised project, True Love, they also reunited on Frankenweenie, which told of the efforts of Victor Frankenstein (Barret Oliver) to use electricity to reanimate his dog, Sparky, after it was run over by a car. The plan was to release the 29-minute short with a reissue of Wolfgang Reitherman's The Jungle Book (1967). It was then linked with Ben Sharpsteen and Hamilton Luske's Pinocchio (1940). But after some children had been upset by a test screening, the studio decided the film was too dark and that Disney would do better without Burton on the payroll. He was more than ready to leave, however, as he couldn't stand the prospect of removing part of his brain and becoming 'a zombie factory worker'.

Eventually, Frankenweenie was shown in the UK with Bill L. Norton's Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend (1985). But this isn't the last we shall hear of a short that so impressed Shelly Duvall (who had played Mrs Frankenstein) that she hired Burton to direct Leonard Nimoy and James Earl Jones in 'Aladdin's Lamp' (1984), for her TV series, Faerie Tale Theatre, the first season of which is available from Cinema Paradiso. Burton has since conceded that he felt out of his depth with a three-camera assignment that turned out 'looking like a Las Vegas show'. He fared better with 'The Jar', a 1985 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, even though it prompted him to conclude 'that nobody should treat me like a director, because I'm not'. However, horror author Stephen King had liked Frankenweenie and shown it to an executive at Warner Bros, who recognised that Burton would be the ideal director for a feature starring his fellow CalArts alumnus, Paul Reubens.

The Gothic Prince

Since leaving college, Reubens had found fame in the guise of manchild Pee-Wee Herman and he believed that Burton's skewed view of the world would ideally suit Pee-Wee's Big Adventure (1985), at the root of which was a zany parody of Vittorio De Sica's neo-realist classic, Bicycle Thieves (1948). In seeking a composer to convey the wackiness of the concept, Burton enlisted Danny Elfman, the frontman of the new wave band, Oingo Boingo, who would become one of the few fixtures in Burton's ever-changing backstage stock company.

Having been lauded for his direction, Burton designed the animation for 'Family Dog', an episode of Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories series (1985-87), while he weighed up his options. Despite his inexperience and indifference to comic-books, he pitched for Warner's Batman revival and put himself in pole position with a treatment written by Julie Hickson. However, before it entrusted a bumper $48 million budget to a sophomore, the front office wanted proof that Burton could handle a major project and he went off to make Beetlejuice (1988), while Sam Hamm's Gotham screenplay went through several rewrites.

With its spooky comedy, the story of a yuppie couple being haunted by the previous occupants of a New England dream home played right into Burton's wheelhouse. Setting out to subvert what he called the 'Spielberg story structure', the director paid homage to the cheapies of his youth by making the ingeniously inventive special effects look deliberately shabby. Moreover, he encouraged Michael Keaton to act on stalks as Betelgeuse, the menacing 'bio-exorcist' who poses an equal threat to the living Deetz and deceased Maitland families.

Grossing around $75 million and landing an Oscar for its make-up, the picture convinced Warners that it had unearthed a wunderkind. However, the production of Batman (1989) was fraught with difficulties, as Burton was forced to hold his nerve against demanding producers Jon Peters and Peter Guber.

Having refused to cast a muscleman as the Dark Knight after reading Alan Moore and Brian Boland's graphic novel, Batman: The Killing Joke (1988), Burton resisted attempts to foist upon him such stars as Mel Gibson, Kevin Costner and Harrison Ford. Bill Murray and Robin Williams were also mentioned, as fanboys speculated on who would get to play the DC Comics superhero and whether Tim Curry, David Bowie, James Woods, John Lithgow or Ray Liotta would work as The Joker.

Ultimately, Burton was splendidly served by Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson, while Kim Basinger made an elegant Vicki Vale, after Sean Young had to withdraw following a riding accident. To many, however, the star of the production was Anton Furst's Oscar-winning conception of Gotham City, which took cues from Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1926), Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985) in striving to create a setting whose architectural excesses proclaimed the corruption and criminality that required a pteropine vigilante to keep the citizens safe.

Bolstered by the biggest marketing and merchandising campaign in Hollywood history, Batman opened to awed reviews and a global gross of $400 million. The clamour for a sequel was instant, but Burton was already harbouring the doubts he would later acknowledge when he told one interviewer, 'I like parts of it, but the whole movie is mainly boring to me. It's okay, but it was more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie.'

Instead, he decided to use his newly acquired clout to greenlight a more personal project, Edward Scissorhands (1990). Scripted by Caroline Thompson to reflect Burton's painful sense of isolation as a boy in Burbank, this poignantly macabre reworking of the Pinocchio story enabled Burton to reunite with Vincent Price, as the Gepetto character. But the casting of Johnny Depp in the title role proved even more significant, as he would go on to figure in seven further features in becoming Burton's male muse.

Made for a modest $20 million, this latterday fairytale earned production designer Bo Welch a BAFTA and he remained in situ when Burton eventually turned his attention to Batman Returns (1992). Having recently divorced after four years from German-born artist Lena Gieseke, Burton was at a low ebb and kept himself busy by acting in Cameron Crowe's Singles and Danny DeVito's Hoffa. He also took a design consultant credit on Peter Hyams's Stay Tuned (all 1992). By the time he was ready to return to Gotham City, Anton Furst was busy with Penny Marshall's Awakenings (1992) and he committed suicide while the $80 million picture was in post-production. No wonder critics detected a darker tone, as Batman (Keaton) took on The Penguin (Danny DeVito), Max Shreck (Christopher Walken) and Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer).

Despite its visual effects and make-up drawing Oscar nominations, the bleaker action saw the takings dip to around $270 million. Consequently, although Burton would receive a producing credit on the follow-up, Joel Schumacher was drafted in to direct Batman Forever (1995), which teamed Val Kilmer and Chris O'Donnell as Batman and Robin, as they locked horns with The Riddler (Jim Carrey) and Two-Face (Tommy Lee Jones).

The Limbo Interlude

Burton was due to direct The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) before schedule conflicts on Batman Returns forced him to hand the reins to Henry Selick. Once again, Disney had reservations about a story in which Pumpkin King, Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon), kidnaps Santa Claus (Ed Ivory) with the aim of making Halloween a bigger festival than Christmas. The blend of quaint and creepy scared up decent business of $50 million, while the critics commended the intricacy of the stop-motion animation and the ingenuity of the Caroline Thompson script that developed producer Burton's narrative outline. But Disney's bosses were unconvinced and released the film through their Touchstone Pictures arm.

Having taken another producing credit on Adam Resnick's comic fantasy, Cabin Boy (1994), Burton set about retelling Robert Louis Stevenson's story about Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde from the viewpoint of a frightened maid. However, frustrations with Columbia executives Jon Peters and Peter Gruber led to Burton quitting Mary Reilly (1996), which was completed by Stephen Frears, with Julia Roberts and John Malkovich in the leads.

One of the bones of contention was the studio's refusal to allow Burton to shoot Ed Wood (1994) in monochrome. So, he and producer Denise DiNovi took the project to Touchstone, which delivered an $18 million budget. Ultimately, the biopic of cross-dressing 1950s B-movie director Edward D. Wood, Jr. took only $6 million at the box office. But it earned Martin Landau the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as ailing horror star, Bela Lugosi. Moreover, Johnny Depp in the title role was supported by an outstanding ensemble that included Bill Murray and Burton's new partner, Lisa Marie, as Vampira.

While serving as producer on Henry Selick's adaptation of Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach, Burton began work on what he intended to be a lavish variation on the kind of high-concept, low-budget entertainment that had been Ed Wood's métier. Inspired by a set of Topps trading cards, Mars Attacks! (both 1996) pitched an A-list cast against marauding Martians because Burton 'thought it would be fun to see big stars getting blown away'.

Much to his frustration, however, the stop-motion process he had planned to use in homage to effects wizard Ray Harryhausen proved too expensive and he was forced to turn to Industrial Light & Magic to computer-generate the space invaders. But, with Jonathan Gems packing his screenplay with references to classic Cold War sci-fi allegories, the film overcame the odd critical misgiving to make back its $100 million outlay, while also ribbing Roland Emmerich's blockbuster, Independence Day (1996).

Despite his track record for delivering crowd-pleasing hits, Burton had to endure his share of setbacks. A planned adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher (which had been filmed by Roger Corman in 1960) fell through, as did a proposed reunion with Michelle Pfeiffer on a Patience Phillips stand-alone. When the latter was revived as Catwoman (2004), with Pitof directing Halle Berry in the lead, the critical mauling was followed by a seven-nomination haul at the Golden Raspberry Awards. The sheer fact that Pitof and Berry's wins were topped by a Worst Picture triumph suggests that you should definitely add this to your Cinema Paradiso viewing list.

The Catwoman saga proved less irksome, however, than the Superman Lives farrago. Kevin Smith had pitched a script in 1996 and Burton came onboard after Robert Rodriguez couldn't bail on The Faculty (1998). Eager to play the Man of Steel in a picture that would coincide with the 60th anniversary of his first appearance in Action Comics, Nicolas Cage agreed to take the lead.

But the problems began when Burton asked Wesley Strick to revise the scenario and Warner Bros commissioned another of their own from Dan Gilroy. Fears about the escalating costs caused the studio to abandon the project, leaving Cage to wait two decades before getting to voice Krypton's favourite son in Peter Rida Michail and Aaron Horvath's Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (2018). Eventually, Bryan Singer got the project over the line with Superman Returns (2006), although it earned Kate Bosworth a Razzie nomination for her work as Lois Lane.

Resentful at wasting a year and saddened by missing out on the chance to make his Vincent Price documentary, Conversations With Vincent, Burton found solace in writing and illustrating the poetry book, The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories (1997). He also found himself at the helm of Sleepy Hollow (1999). Scripted by Andrew Kevin Walker, this adaptation of Washington Irving's short story about a headless horseman landed in Burton's lap after Paramount disagreed with Kevin Yagher over his slasher approach. With Johnny Depp as Ichabod Crane, Burton's version was rooted firmly in the gothic tradition, although it also owed much to German Expressionism, Hammer, Corman and, would you believe, Dr Seuss.

Enter One Bloated Chipmunk

As the great-granddaughter of a Prime Minister, Helena Bonham Carter seemed cut out for the kind of English rose roles she played in Trevor Nunn's Lady Jane (1986) and Merchant-Ivory's A Room With a View (1985), Maurice (1987) and Howards End (1992). But the so-called 'Corset Queen' wanted to shed her image, as she felt it made her look like 'a bloated chipmunk'.

She had already started reinventing herself when Burton offered her the part of Ari in Planet of the Apes (2001), with the words: 'Don't take this the wrong way, but you were the first person I thought of to play a chimpanzee.' Their partnership would last for 13 years and produce children Billy Ray and Nell, as well as several memorable films.

Fresh from producing the Internet series, The World of Stainboy (2000), and from convincing Disney to shelve plans for a CGI sequel to The Nightmare Before Christmas, Burton picked up the simian project after Peter Jackson, Oliver Stone, Chris Columbus and James Cameron had passed during the protracted pre-production period. Eager to pay tribute to Franklin J. Schaffner's Planet of the Apes (1968), he persuaded Charlton Heston to cameo as Zaius, only for him to win the Razzie for Worst Supporting Actor, as the film took Worst Remake or Sequel.

Nevertheless, it grossed over $360 million worldwide and bought Burton the freedom to make Big Fish (2003). Based on Daniel Wallace's Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions, the story of a son trying to fathom where the line between fact and fiction lies in his father's past had initially attracted Steven Spielberg. But he became distracted by Catch Me If You Can (2002) and Jack Nicholson was replaced by Albert Finney as Edward Bloom, as Burton found a cathartic way to deal with his own father's death in 2000 and the loss of his mother in March 2002.

Around this time, Burton moved into new offices in the former London home of Arthur Rackham, who had illustrated the first edition of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan (1906) and a 1907 reissue of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. He and Bonham Carter also acquired interconnected homes in Belsize Park and collaborated on a new version of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - which had previously been adapted as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory by Mel Stuart in 1971 - and Burton's first stop-animation as a director, Corpse Bride (both 2005). Having played the supporting role of Mrs Bucket, alongside Johnny Depp and Freddie Highmore, Bonham Carter voiced the eponymous character of Emily in a Victorian tale of longing and sacrifice that is haunting in every way.

Remaining in musical mode, Burton took on Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's 1979 Broadway hit, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007). With Depp's Todd cutting throats and Bonham Carter's Mrs Lovett baking his victims into pies, this gleefully grisly saga earned Burton a Golden Globe for Best Director, while Depp was Oscar-nominated for Best Actor and Dante Ferretti and Francesca Lo Schiavo won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction.

Impressed by Shane Acker's Oscar-nominated animated short, 9 (2005), Burton teamed with Russian director Timur Bekmambetov to co-produce the 2009 feature version of 9, in which Elijah Wood leads an all-star vocal cast as the Stitchpunk determined to discover why a 1930s dictator had turned the Fabrication Machine upon the world's human population. Burton's next venture as a director was a much more benevolent fantasy, however, as he and screenwriter Linda Woolverton merged ideas from the writings of Lewis Carroll to concoct a new interpretation of Alice in Wonderland (2010), which takes place 13 years after the original adventure. Once again, Burton demonstrated his pulling power by enticing a galaxy of stars to play the live-action and animated characters. Four years later, he would produce Woolverton's re-imagining of Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) for director James Bobin.

Old Friends and New Directions

Rumours flew in 2010 about Burton's next project. Scoops tied him into a movie take on the Kaiju-themed game, Monsterpocalypse, and a live-action version of Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (several versions of which are available with just one click from Cinema Paradiso). It was also announced that he would tackle Linda Woolverton's next screenplay, which had been inspired by the wicked fairy in Disney's Sleeping Beauty (Clyde Geronimi, 1959). However, Angelina Jolie was eventually directed in Maleficent (2014) by Robert Stromberg, who had been the production designer on Alice in Wonderland.

It was also reported that Burton would helm a 3-D stop-animated revival of The Addams Family. However, this would eventually appear in 2019, with Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon in the hotseats. But Burton was hardly sitting on his laurels. In addition to producing Timur Bekmambetov's Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and cameoing uncredited as an alien on a monitor screen in Barry Sonnenfeld's Men in Black 3 (both 2012), he was also directing two features.

Based on a TV soap opera, Dark Shadows turned on the efforts of 18th-century vampire Barnabas Collins to wrestle back control of his ancestral Collinwood home, when he wakes in 1972 to discover it in the hands of some dysfunctional descendants. Christopher Lee would rack up his 200th film credit, as a local fisherman. But this would prove to be a project of farewells, as trusted producer Richard D. Zanuck died shortly after the shoot, while neither Johnny Depp nor Helena Bonham Carter has worked with Burton since.

By contrast, Eva Green, who plays vengeful witch Angelique Bouchard, has become something of a Burton regular. She was missing from Frankenweenie (2012), however, as it became the first black-and-white feature and the first ever stop-motion film to be released in IMAX 3D. Nor was she part of Big Eyes (2014), a biopic about artist Margaret Keane (Amy Adams) and her exploitative husband, Walter (Christoph Waltz), who tried to claim her distinctive and highly popular paintings as his own work.

However, Green did headline Burton's adaptation of Ransom Riggs's novel, Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children (2016). Scripted by Jane Goldman, the story follows teenager Jake Portman (Asa Butterfield) to Cairnholm, off the Welsh coast, where he finds a school for Peculiars that has been hidden in a time loop since it was created by Alma LeFay Peregrine on 3 September 1943.

Green also went back in time, to 1919, to play French trapeze artist Colette Marchant in Burton's 2019 live-action re-imagining of Walt Disney's 1941 animated adaptation of Dumbo. Reuniting Burton with Michael Keaton (as circus owner V.A. Vandervere) and Danny DeVito (as ringmaster Max Medici), the film dispensed with the talking animals to focus on the human reaction to a flying elephant. It globally grossed over $350 million, but the reviews were mostly sceptical.

The media hasn't been wildly enthusiastic, either, about Wednesday, a Netflix series starring Jenny Ortega as Wednesday Addams. But the critics are as excited as anyone else by the reports circulating that Burton is about to embark on an overdue sequel, Beetlejuice 2.