Tim Burton Would Like to Make BEETLEJUICE 2

In the past year it was announced that screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith and his partner David Katzenberg had been handed the task of resuscitating Beetlejuice. Touching such a beloved character had most fans very nervous. Most of us were expecting it to be another lame reboot, but in October the duo assured the fans that wasn't the case. They actually were planning on making a sequel, and more importantly wanted Michael Keaton back as the ghost with the most.

They also revealed that Tim Burton gave them the blessing, and now MTV has caught up with the zany director to get his thoughts on the potential project.

MTV: Is it true that you're considering doing another "Beetlejuice" film?

Burton: Yes. I love that character, and Michael [Keaton] is so great in it. I always think about how great and fun that character was, so I just said to ["Vampire Hunter" writer] Seth [Grahame-Smith], "If you have some idea about it, go for it, and then I'll look at it freshly." In the past, I tried some things, but that was way back when. He seemed really excited about it.

MTV: Has he run any of his ideas by you yet?

Burton: No. I told him to try some stuff, but he hasn't come back to me yet. Michael was so great in it. I'm sure he'd strangely tap right back into it.

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While on the Dark Shadows front, Burton said he is in currently in the process of editing and doing special effects for the film. He did reveal that the movie will not be as effects-heavy as his past films.

One of the elements in the original soap opera and the rebooted version ,that starred Ben Cross, was time travel. Fans have been wondering for quite some time if Tim Burton would utilize the story telling device. When asked about it, he responded, "Not too much. A tiny bit. For me, that's when the show kind of made me want to do homework. I was like, wait a minute! That came near the end of the trail of the series."

MTV : With over 1,200 episodes of the original series to draw upon, what was important to you to retain?

Burton: It's got such a strange vibe. And it's not something that a lot of people necessarily know. You're trying to do a weird soap opera. I felt really lucky, because the cast is really good. People like Michelle [Pfeiffer] grew up watching it. Some of the cast knew about it. Some didn't, but they were all game for it — getting into the weird spirit of what "Dark Shadows" was. It has a weird sense of heightened melodrama. There was a generation of us who would run home from school to watch it. That's probably why we were such bad students. We should have been doing homework; we were watching "Dark Shadows" instead. It was hard to put into words the tone it was. It had a weird seriousness, but it was funny in a way that wasn't really funny. We just had to feel our way through it to find the tone. We didn't do any real rehearsals, because the cast all came in at different times. But there was an old photo of the [original] cast which I always remembered, so a couple days before shooting, we got the whole cast together to take a similar shot so everyone could see each other and get that vibe from doing a group photo. That helped set the tone more than anything.

MTV: Some of it takes place in the 1700s, but most of it takes place in 1972, is that right?

Burton: Yeah it goes back, but it's mainly in 1972, which to the era of "Dark Shadows" is the modern era. To me, it was a scary time.

MTV: Does the film leave that house much?

Burton: A little bit, but the thing about "Dark Shadows" was it was a very hermetically sealed world. It's mainly the internal family melodrama. You get a little bit of the sense of the world, but it's like "Grey Gardens," where these people are in their own sort of world.