Burton, Keaton, Ryder in Talks for "Beetlejuice 2"

Is it "showtime" again for Beetlejuice?

Sources have told Variety that Tim Burton is in talks to direct a sequel to his 1988 comedy, Beetlejuice. Seth Grahame Smith (Dark Shadows, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) penned the script and will produce with his partner David Katzenberg through their KatzSmith Productions.

Burton rarely does sequels (his only sequel has been Batman Returns), but perhaps he's interested in revisiting one of his favorite film characters. Vital to this is that Michael Keaton is interested in reprising his leading ghoulish role, having told NME.com that the sequel is "a go."

Additionally, Winona Ryder might be reprising her character. The actress recently told The Daily Beast that the long-gestating sequel "might be happening."

Burton, of course, is quite busy. The filmmaker is also eyeing his Fox project, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, with one source saying it could possibly go before Beetlejuice 2. Also, he is in production on his latest feature, Big Eyes.

More information will be announced in the near future, so stay tuned!

"Batman Returns" Penguins Artwork Revealed

Conceptual artist Tim Flattery (Batman Returns, Batman Forever) released some amusing artwork he made for Tim Burton's Batman Returns, involving penguins armed with buzz saws, boxing gloves, and other comic weaponry.

Interview: Burton on "Frankenweenie," Autobiography

/Film interviewed Tim Burton recently. They discuss the new stop-motion Frankenweenie, the aspects of autobiography in the film, Burton's love of science and art, and more:

/Film: I’m curious about the degree to which Frankenweenie is autobiographical. It’s easy to watch the film and assume certain things about the level of representation of your life, but I also wonder about it being a film about the perception of your life.

Tim Burton: Well, this was definitely a real memory piece, because I mean the original short was based on the kind of relation I had with my first pet, that kind of relationship, and Frankenstein films and monster movies. What made me want to go back to the material was a couple of things, one was the stop motion, which I love, and going back to the original drawings, as there was something in those drawings that you couldn’t quite get in live action which I wanted to explore. Then just beyond that initial relationship, it made me start thinking about the other kinds of kids in school, the place I grew up, the teachers… a lot of other kinds of monsters. There were lots of elements that came up that fit into that same sort of world, so all of that together made it feel like a new project to me and something very special. I tried to link almost everything up to somebody I knew, you know like kids and types of people that I remember and the types of relationships you had with other kids and stuff. So almost everything was based on something of a memory.

One line that really stuck out was when Victor’s father discusses reanimating the dead, and says it is “upsetting.” Over the course of your career you’ve played a lot with notions that are upsetting to a certain general population. I’m wondering if the notion of “what is upsetting” or what you think other people might find upsetting has changed over the years.

It’s always funny to me, because I always think… because you’re right, and then I go “Well I grew up on Disney movies” and there’s a lot of weird shit in those movies, you know? People, as they get older they forget these things I think. It’s interesting. I always found it a strange phenomenon. I mean I remember when the short came out and they were all freaked out with “It’s too weird. It’s too dark.” It was meant to go out with Pinocchio as kind of a featurette and “yeah, it’s too weird and too dark” and then they showed Pinocchio and the kids are screaming and running out of the theater, because there’s some scary stuff in it. I just remember them like on Batman Returns, “It’s so much darker than the first one.” Or “It’s so much lighter.” Like half the people would say it was “darker” and half the people said it was “lighter.” It’s like “How can something be lighter and then half of you say…” So I’ve always had a strange kind of… So at the end of the day it’s a mystery to me. (Laughs) It just kind of makes me laugh now, because I still to this day don’t understand it.

Are there things that are upsetting to you? Are there concepts that you think “Okay, no. That’s just something that shouldn’t be explored.”

A lot of movies now are just such torture, I mean there are things that are hard for me to watch, certain violence, even though I grew up watching Hammer Horror films and I loved… My level of torture porn is probably like Dr. Phibes or Theater of Blood, you know? (Laughs) That’s about my level.

How did you work with John August on the script? Was that a very close collaboration?

Yeah. I showed him the original thing and we started riffing. I wanted to expand it and go like… “Remember what they did in the original? This was like later with Universal when they did like House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula where they brought in other monsters or Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein.” There’s something about those that I always loved, the idea, so that was a sort of framework, but then it was just trying to be about, for me, as personal, like “This kind of kid, that kind of kid” and finding the right… I gave him kids and monsters and talked about the framework of it all and he’s quite good and he knows me, so he got it pretty quickly.

Among the characters, you’ve got the kids who are clued into what’s going on, and you’ve got their teacher, who’s two generations up. In the middle are the parents who are just flailing around. Is that consistent with your own experiences growing up?

Yeah, I would say so. I tried to treat all of the emotions as real as possible and also just the weird kid politics. Also, with Victor, it’s like he’s a loner in a certain way, but at the same time he is the most normal one in a certain way and that to me felt like it was an accurate feeling. I remember feeling like an outsider, but I also felt quite normal, and I also felt like everybody else was weird, and that dynamic of how kids are with each other and how there are certain teachers where you don’t really know what they are talking about and have a certain power to them. So all of those kind of things were based on real people and real feelings.

Do you ever go back to those memories and start to wonder “are these memories actually legit?”

Well yeah, it’s true. I think, especially as time goes on, how you remember something isn’t necessarily the way it was. Also, even though you might grow up feeling like you are completely alone, if you asked any other kid they would probably feel the same way. So I think that you can only use your own experience and for me it wasn’t so much… Memory, you try to treat it as such. A memory can remain very powerful and there’s validity to that and as long as your not trying to say “That’s exactly it,” because obviously with this it’s not a historical piece. So there’s a bit of looseness to that.

Do you have any artifacts of your own childhood that you can go back to to say, “Oh, I can pinpoint how I was feeling at this point.”

I can go to Burbank and look at all of the houses I grew up in and all of that stuff and get a weird vibe, yeah. So there’s that, which somewhat has remained kind of the same. It’s a strange place. It hasn’t really changed that much.

I was really struck by some of the attitudes towards science in the film. [Ed: there's a thing about science needing to be tempered by love.] Was that you, or was that John?

For me, well again I grew up with Dr. Frankenstein and all of those mad scientist characters. I mean I always loved that and I link that to science and art and creativity and how I remember growing up there was a real kind… There was a suppressing of those emotions in people and trying to suppress creative thinking or science and thinking about things in a different way. It seems like even more so now there’s a kind of suppression of those kinds of feelings. So that was an important message with science, art, or anything where people are thinking, to let that flourish and not let that be suppressed.

So those impulses are closely connected for you, artistic and scientific?

Yeah.

Video: Watch "The Batmobile" Documentary

You can watch the entire documentary, The Batmobile, on YouTube for at least a little while. The film surveys the history, evolution, and significance of the iconic vehicle, and features insights with Tim Burton (who, as you know quite well, directed Batman and Batman Returns, and produced Batman Forever), Adam West, Christopher Nolan, Christian Bale, and many more.

This documentary will eventually be released on Blu-ray and digital download this holiday season.

Video: "The Batmobile" Documentary Trailer

Warner Bros. Online has posted a trailer for a documentary on the history of the Batmobile. Tim Burton (director of Batman and Batman Returns, as well as producer of Batman Forever), Christopher Nolan, Adam West, Christian Bale, Joel Schumacher, and many others will be contributing to the documentary, giving a thorough history of the design, evolution, and significance of the iconic vehicle of one of the most infamous superheroes.

The documentary -- simply titled, The Batmobile -- will be previewed at Comic-Con in San Diego today, reports WorstPreviews.com. It will be broadcast on the CW on Monday, July 16th at 8:00 PM EST, and will eventually be released on Blu-ray and digital download this holiday season.

Video: Burton on "Vampire Hunter," "Frankenweenie," Old and New Projects

Collider recently had a conversation with Tim Burton. In the interview, the filmmaker discussed a range of topics, from how Disney let him make his stop-motion Frankenweenie, his involvement with Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, what he thinks of the test-screening process, whether there are deleted scenes from older films like Ed Wood, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, and Beetlejuice, and his criteria in picking future projects.

Production Designer Rick Heinrichs on "Frankenweenie"

Collider recently caught up with Rick Heinrichs, production designer on Frankenweenie. The production designer has worked with Burton on numerous films in different capacities: Edward Scissorhands, Batman Returns, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Sleepy Hollow, Planet of the Apes, Dark Shadows, and their first black and white, stop-motion animated film, the short Vincent (back in 1982), as well as the original live-action Frankenweenie short in 1984, to name a few. Heinrichs discussed his role on the new black and white, stop-motion animated film which will be released in theaters on October 5th, as well as his working relationship and friendship with Tim Burton, which dates back to over thirty years ago when they were film students:

Question: How did you get involved with this project?

RICK HEINRICHS: Let’s see, 30 years ago, we did the live-action Frankenweenie, and it was a fruition of a certain period of development that Tim [Burton] and I had gone through from CalArts to Disney. That was the last thing we did at Disney, at that time. In fact, we did Frankenweenie after we developing another little TV show that we were trying to sell, called The Nightmare Before Christmas, and that ended up happening later, as well. I was actually surprised to find out that a stop-motion version of Frankenweenie was going to happen, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought, “What a great idea!” I loved the live action version, and there was something great about doing all of the design sets on stage, in addition to the location and the interiors, and it got my own wheels turning about doing live-action films, in the future, which I have continued to do. But then the idea of looking at this again, as much as I love it, there’s things that I wish we could have fixed about it. How often do you get to redo things like that? Doing it as a stop-motion animated film is appealing because that’s my passion. And, Tim and I did Vincent together, many years ago, as a kick-off for those. I think when you see the film, you can see how sophisticated it’s become. What I love about it is that it still feels handmade. You can still see the hand of the animator in there, and all of the passion that they’re putting into the character. You don’t necessarily think about it when you’re watching it, which is great. It does feel like the actors are really acting. Those animators are just amazing, the way they act through these puppets. In terms of design, it’s amazing to see it in black and white again, and really play with the tonal values in a much more controlled way, this time. When you’re doing a live-action film, you’re dealing with a lot more people and, as much as you want to control the sets and control the lighting, it’s like wearing boxing gloves to try to do something delicate. With stop-motion animation, the cinematographer is lighting the set, and the set decorators and the model makers and the animators are all people you’re talking directly to. You can fix things. It’s on a scale where it’s all fixable, and you can continue to manipulate things until it shoots. It’s a longer process of prep and production as well, so you can really bring more, continuity to bear, on the whole process.

What’s the most complex set in the film?

HEINRICHS: Well, the town is probably our most complex set. For any number of reasons of efficiencies, we really tried to restrict how that was going to get shot and be reasonable and, at the same time, give the sense of the character of the town, as a background of the people. Whenever we prepare for these things, we always design much more than we end up doing, so we have lots and lots of stores that we designed. It lives in this pseudo-Burbank world, which is where Tim grew up, coincidentally, but not exactly. It’s post-war Southwestern America. It shares a little bit of design similarity to Edward Scissorhands, in the scene of a neighborhood or a flat sense of normal with this one aberration, sticking up in the background, which is very much of a signature motif for Tim. A lot of what he tries to do is to establish a sense of what’s normal and show how that can be somewhat monstrous, in its own way. The idea of bringing your dog back to life is a nominally horrific idea, but it gets played out in this lovely way, and it ends up being a love story, really.

Did you use photo reference for it?

HEINRICHS: Yeah, we did what I would normally do on any film that’s live-action or animation. We did a lot of research. We pulled together a lot of that mid-century modern look of suburbia, that’s not really high-end stuff. It’s really more of the tract housing of the post-war era. It created its own rhythm and feel to it, and now I think it’s beautiful. It’s so flat and says so much about the people who live there. And then, the black and white just looks beautiful.

How did the New Holland idea come up?

HEINRICHS: New Holland occurred with Tim and John August, at the story stage. It was all about having Dutch day, and also about how American communities really take these Old World elements and they turn it into this flat, suburban thing. They knock down all the maple trees and they call it Maple Street. It’s this absconding of things out in the world, and making it your own thing. There was something characteristically American and charming about that, like Solvang. To be honest with you, I really think that it establishes a purpose for the windmill. Since we’re not making it part of a miniature golf course, as we did in the live-action film, we had to find another reason for it to be. But, that’s just my assumption.

Was there a reason why you made the sets were in color and the characters in black and white?

HEINRICHS: Yes, because the grass came that way. The reason why they’re in color is partly because we were replacing skies and set extending and using backgrounds, so there is a lot of digital work going on in the background. What I love is the fact that you don’t really think about that. All the stuff in the foreground is appropriately handmade and hand-animated. The look and feel of that, from the excellent visual effects people who did all the work on it, it’s part of their job to make it all work as one world, to make sure what they do is not photo realistically, which would be their normal bent. They’re actually matching a look and feel that’s already there. We were chromocene, so there were green screens behind elements. And, all of the black and white gets timed and sweetened in post-production. But, all the dailies were shown in black and white. As far as everybody was concerned, they were living in a black and white world. This is a much smaller range of graphic elements. We’re dealing with tone and shape and form and light, instead of color, and all the other stuff that comes with color. It’s out of that, that we’re trying to feeling and support the story. I think it looks beautiful. I think it does evoke a certain period of horror/science fiction films. It works in a dual way, and I know that Tim loves that stuff, as well.

Is that more liberating for you, or more challenging?

HEINRICHS: It’s both liberating and challenging. The challenge is that you have to pay much more attention to that specific stuff because you don’t have the other stuff to make it look great. Once you learn that and figure that out, then you realize that you are really dealing with elements. The tool kit is then atmospheric perspective, one foreground shape against another, lighting, texture and form. Originally, I was a sculptor, so that’s appealing to me, as well.

What was the process of taking Tim’s original drawings and translating them into these three-dimensional figures and creating a whole world from his sketches like?

HEINRICHS: I would have to go back to our early days of Disney when they were regenerating the studio. We were all working on The Fox and the Hound. It was initially exciting to be working on a Disney film, but then it just sagged in the middle, a little bit, although my kids like it. It’s a good movie. You’ve got to imagine this place with all these young animators, all of whom have been told that they’re special and are going to be amazing someday, and realize what it’s like to do the work of a big, corporate animated film. And, we would just do stuff on the outside. We’d make Super 8 movies, and do anything we could to keep our blood going. I’d always been a fan of Tim’s own work. I’m sure you’ve seen his sketches. What was appealing about them was the sense of character and beautiful line. I wanted to make it three-dimensional because I thought that his work was very three-dimensional, even though a lot of people at Disney thought it was very linear. Apparently, the hallmark of a Disney film is that they look very three-dimensional, back in those days. So, I just took it upon myself to make sculptures of his work, and there was just something different that happened. It was his intent and his look, but it was in light with form. It was just a very natural progression, to try to do those in a stop-motion animated film.

Has your job changed with like the advent of higher grade visuals and 3D?

HEINRICHS: Yes, it’s much harder to do our job because you see every pore. I think that it is an incredibly appropriate use of digital technology. It was amazing to see all of the improvements and progressions that had happened, by the time we did Nightmare in the early ‘90s with motion control, but that was with old film technology. Now, with digital cameras, which are much smaller, the ability to completely restructure the entire process using computers, you still end up with a very believably handmade product, but you’ve just helped yourself enormously with all the other things that happened. So, I’m a fan of technology. I’m not a Luddite. My problem has been with purely digital films. I feel the danger there is that the kind of short-cuts you end up having to take are the ones that are most telling in the main characters. I don’t feel that that’s the case with what we’ve been doing on Frankenweenie.

What were the discussions like, to differentiate the look of this film from everything else that Tim’s done?

HEINRICHS: There wasn’t a conscious effort to differentiate it. My feeling is that, if you do your due process and go back to the well, grab the original inspiration and just develop it from the ground up, it is just, by its own nature, going to be different. It wasn’t really intentional. With Tim, all of his films live in a Burton world, and there are different parts of that world that look a bit different. The point is never to intentionally make it not look like something else. The intent is always to go back to the source and figure out how that is informing this project.

Tim made the original Frankenweenie when he was a 25-year-old kid. Is it surreal to be revisiting it, this many years later, and to what degree are you trying to recreate what you did before?

HEINRICHS: You gain wisdom and you don’t make the same mistakes. When you’re that age, there’s a kind of energy to what you do. Because you don’t know enough not to make mistakes, there is something that is very infectious about the work. In the original Frankenweenie, there are a couple of things that are cringe worthy for me, like how we engineered the burning of the windmill. That’s always been a problem for me. But, it was a live-action film, and you’re on that rock, rolling down the hill. I do think back to that time with a lot of fondness about the young guys who were doing that stuff. It is so surreal to be able to go back and re-work something in a different way and, really, in a new way. Yes, it’s the same story, but it really is different and it has a different feel to it, as well.

What made you and Tim hit it off, all those, all those years ago, and how has your personal chemistry been, through all these films that you’ve done together?

HEINRICHS: It started because his talents and mine intermeshed, rather than competed. Probably a lot of it is that I just really dug what he was doing and wanted to see it develop. And, with any relationship over years, it evolves. We’ve gone our separate ways and done different things. I’ve worked with Tim for the last two and a half or three years, pretty consistently, and it feels great to be able to pick that up again. There’s a friendship there, and there’s been an evolution over the years, as well.

Did you meet working at Disney, or at CalArts?

HEINRICHS: Well, actually, he was at CalArts. I’d already gone through four years of art school, and I was the oldest guy in the first year there because I wanted to do animation. All these guys, who were years younger than me, including, you know, John Lasseter and Brad Bird, and other people like that, were in a grade level above me, so we didn’t actually start really working together until the studio.

Video: Depp Doesn't Dance

While appearing on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Dark Shadows cast mates Michelle Pfeiffer and Chloe Moretz entered the stage like most guests of the day-time talk show: by dancing. Johnny Depp, however, did not.

"I fear it more than anything," Depp said of dancing. “When I’m doing the film and it’s choreographed and you’re in character, it’s alright. But in life, I’d rather swallow a bag of hair,” he said of his decision.

The three actors did talk about their new film, Dark Shadows, of course, as well as Pfeiffer's role as Catwoman in Batman Returns, and not just dancing and eating hair. See the video clip below:

Burton, Depp on "Dark Shadows"

Collider recently spoke with Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. In this interview, the two discussed numerous topics relating to Dark Shadows, including how they decided to make this project, Depp's role as a producer, whether or not they might do a sequel, playing a vampire and Depp's influences in taking the part, and much more:

Question: Tim, can you talk about Johnny Depp bringing this to your attention and getting this project going?

TIM BURTON: We’ve talked about it for many years, but this was the first project that I ever remember Johnny saying that he’d wanted to play this ever since he was a little boy.

JOHNNY DEPP: Just a wee tike.

BURTON: He knew Barnabas Collins before he knew his own father.

DEPP: Pretty much.

BURTON: It was one of those things where the show had a lot of impact for some of us. Johnny, Michelle [Pfeiffer] and I were there at the time it came out, and we just recall it being a very strong, interesting property. This was something that Johnny had had for a long time.

Johnny, as a producer, what did you want to make sure you got across with this film?

DEPP: It’s impossible to consider myself a producer. I can barely produce an English muffin, in the morning. That’s the producer [in me]. But, just as a fan of the show, our initial conversation about the thing was during Sweeney Todd, where I just blurted out, in mid-conversation, “God, we should do a vampire movie together, where you have a vampire that looks like a vampire.” Dark Shadows was looming on the periphery, and then Tim and I started talking about it. When we got together, Tim and I started figuring out how it should be shaped. And then, (screenwriter) Seth [Grahame-Smith] came on board and the three of us just riffed. One thing led to another, and it basically dictated to us what it wanted to be, in a sense, certainly with Tim at the forefront, leading the troops.

What were the key elements from the original series that you wanted to carry over to this film?

BURTON: It’s a tricky tone and we all recognize that. When we talked about Dark Shadows, part of its appeal was the weird nature of all the elements that went into it. It was very serious, but it was on in the afternoon, on a daily basis. There were certain reasons why we loved the show, but you couldn’t necessarily adopt to a film. It was the weirdest challenge to get the acting tone and the soap opera nature of the tone. That’s a weird thing to go for in a Hollywood movie. It’s not like you can go to a studio and go, “We want to do weird soap opera acting.” They go, “Oh, great! Whatever that means.” That’s why I was so grateful to all of the cast. Even the ones that didn’t know the show, got into the spirit of it. What made it Dark Shadows was trying to capture the spirit of what the show was.

Johnny, what was the key to playing Barnabas Collins?

DEPP: There is some kind of thread throughout all these characters. The idea of this very elegant, upper-echelon, well-schooled gentleman, who was cursed in the 18th Century and is brought back to the most surreal era of our time – the 1970s, with 1972 – and how he would react to things and how radically different things were, not just with regard to technology and automobiles, but actual items of enjoyment for people, like pet rocks, fake flowers, plastic fruit, troll dolls, lava lamps and macrame owls. Those were my favorite.

What do you think people find so tempting about vampires?

DEPP: It’s a strange thing because, as a child, I certainly had a fascination with monsters and vampires, as did Tim. There’s this darkness, this mystery, this intrigue. And then, as you get older, you recognize the erotic nature of the vampire and the idea of the undead. What was most interesting, in terms of Barnabas, was the combination. It was a real challenge, probably more for Tim than me, to make that vampire, who is clearly a vampire, fit back into this odd society and this dysfunctional family, and I think he did it rather seamlessly.

Tim, what was it like to re-team with Michelle Pfeiffer, for the first time in 20 years, since Batman Returns?

BURTON: It was weird because it reminded me how much I loved working with Michelle. It was a long time ago, but it just flooded back. I never really watch the movies again, but how impressed I remember being with Michelle just flooded back. She learned how to use a whip and jump around on roofs in high-heeled shoes, let live birds fly out of her mouth, and let cats eat her. It was very impressive stuff. So, it was a real joy to get a call from Michelle [before there was even a script] and find out that she was a closet Dark Shadows fan. I knew she was weird, but that confirmed the whole situation. It was great. Michelle and Johnny and I, we were the only ones of the cast that knew Dark Shadows. You can’t really show Dark Shadows to anybody else that doesn’t know it ‘cause they’d probably run screaming out of the room. It was nice that Michelle, playing the head of the family, was a fan. It just made me realize how much I enjoyed working with her. But, she did have trouble walking down the stairs in this movie. Some people’s powers diminish, at some point.

Johnny, what was it like, the first time you had to bite someone in the film?

BURTON: Yeah, how was your bite on that big construction worker? Did you enjoy that?

DEPP: Well, going back to the erotic nature of vampires, I felt as though I was biting one of the Village People.

BURTON: And then, he went on to the biker and the cowboy.

DEPP: And the cop. No. When I had the fangs in, I wanted to be a little bit careful that I didn’t actually pierce the jugular. It was kind of like my experience shaving Alan Rickman (in Sweeney Todd), which, by the way, neither of us want to do again, especially Alan.

Johnny, actor Chris Sarandon said that he felt sorry for you for having to wear the vampire nails because he had such a hard time with it when he did Fright Night. How was it for you to have to wear them?

DEPP: There are many more reasons to feel sorry for me. We can go through them now, or we can just cuddle after. We can have a big group cuddle, and all get greasy and weird. In every film that I’ve been lucky enough to do with Tim, there’s always some form of torture. The nails were Tim’s idea. They were the length of the fingers. But, it was okay because I had a troupe of people who would help me go to the bathroom. They had to have treatment afterwards, but they’re okay now. That is true.

How much of your physicality for Barnabas came from watching Jonathan Frid, and was there also some Nosferatu influence?

DEPP: Approaching Barnabas, even in the early days of trying to explore the possibilities of the character, no matter where you went in your head, if you tried to veer away from the original Jonathan Frid character, it was apparent to both Tim and myself that it had to be rooted in Jonathan Frid’s character of Barnabas. It just had to be. It was so classic, in the classic monster, Fangoria magazine way. In terms of that, when Jonathan was playing Barnabas, there was a rigidity to him, like he had a pole of the back and this elegance that was always there. Tim and I talked early on that a vampire should look like a vampire. It was a rebellion against vampires that look like underwear models. There was a bit of Nosferatu in there, too.

What was it like to use a cane for this character?

DEPP: The cane was one of the left-over things from the series. It’s pretty much the same design. It’s slightly altered. It’s not a silver-tipped cane because my hand would have burst into flame.

How was it to have the original cast on the set?

DEPP: Well, it was great! It was great of Tim to bring them into the fold. It was our way of saluting them, and Jonathan was terrific. He had written me a letter, a couple of years before, and signed a photograph to me, passing the baton to Barnabas, which I thought was very sweet. He had his original Barnabas cane with him and I wasn’t sure, when he actually saw me, if he was going to attack me with it, but he didn’t.

BURTON: It’s like having the Pope come visit. For us, part of the reason we were there was because those people inspired us, so it was nice to see them back in their early ‘70s clothing.

Tim, with such a big cast, what deleted scenes might be on the DVD?

BURTON: There’s stuff that we cut out. Each actor will have all of their best scenes that I’ve cut out of the film in there. No. I think there will be some stuff on it because, with the nature of it being a soap opera, we cut out stuff, but all the actors were great, so I think I’m going to look at having scenes that aren’t in the film. Because the actors did such a great job and because of the soap opera nature of it, we’ll probably have some stuff on there.

Johnny, after working on Dark Shadows, was the influence of Dan Curtis what led you to want to do The Night Stalker?

DEPP: From Dark Shadows, The Night Stalker appeared, and it was a show that I really loved. Again, there’s this weird tone to it. This reporter becomes a detective in these really odd situations. Yeah, Dan Curtis was a great, great influence.

Since this is not material that current movie audiences are familiar with, did you worry about whether the interest would be there?

BURTON: Going into this movie, you don’t go into it going, “Oh, Dark Shadows, what an easy peasy idea.” It’s not like you go into it thinking that. It’s actually a much more strange challenge.

There’s always a lot of pressure for summer movies to perform. Do you hope this film reaches beyond its specific niche audience and is seen by a larger group of people?

BURTON: There are Dark Shadows fans, and then there’s everybody else. You can’t really make it with projecting what you think it’s going to be. First of all, we made a movie that we wanted to see, and then you just hope for the best.

The ending of this lends itself to a possible sequel. Did you always think that this could be a possible start to a franchise?

BURTON: No. Because of the nature of it being like a soap opera, that was the structure. It wasn’t a conscious decision. First of all, it’s a bit presumptuous to think that. If something works out, that’s one thing, but you can’t ever predict that. That had more to do with the soap opera structure of it.

Johnny, people have said that you’re in this Marlon Brando phase of your career, making these very eccentric characters come to life. Having directed and worked with Marlon Brando, do you see that as a valid comparison?

DEPP: I couldn’t imagine my name and Marlon’s in the same sentence, in terms of the work. He was a great friend of mine, and certainly a great inspiration and a great mentor. I don’t know.

If you had to stay one of your characters for the rest of your life, who would it be?

DEPP: Probably the Earl of Rochester (from The Libertine).

Burton on "Batman" Movies, Michelle Pfeiffer

With Christopher Nolan's highly anticipated The Dark Knight Rises coming to theaters this summer, Tim Burton was asked to compare his two Batman movies with this new generation of films.

"I always get told that my material is dark," the filmmaker said, "but nowadays my version of Batman looks like a lighthearted romp in comparison to Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight."

Burton also talked about collaborating with Michelle Pfeiffer on Batman Returns in 1992, with much praise. "For me, her version of Catwoman was one of my favorite performances on any movie I had worked on," Burton stated. "I remember how she impressed me by letting a live bird fly out of her mouth, learning how to use a whip and dancing around on rooftops with high-heeled shoes on. She did all that stuff for real."

Burton and Pfeiffer are working together for the first time in two decades with their latest project, Dark Shadows. "I hadn't really talked to her for about 20 years, and she called before I had started working on Dark Shadows, and she told me how much she loved the old TV series and she wanted to be involved."

Video: Burton Receives Empire Legend Award

Tim Burton was the recipient of the Empire Legend Award at the 2012 Jameson Empire Awards. Danny DeVito presented the award to the filmmaker, and opens by talking about his fond memories and hilarious anecdotes of collaborating with Burton on three films: Batman Returns (1992), Mars Attacks! (1996), and Big Fish (2003). Here is the video for DeVito's opening and Burton's acceptance speech.

Tim Burton Collection Blu-Ray Exclusive Set

Amazon.com will be releasing an exclusive Blu-Ray box set on May 1st, 2012: The Tim Burton Collection. The box set will also include a book, and includes Tim Burton's seven films made with Warner Bros.: Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985), Beetlejuice (1988), Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992), Mars Attacks! (1996), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), and Corpse Bride (2005). Click this link for more details.

Pfeiffer on "Batman Returns," Burton's "Catwoman" Movie

Michelle Pfeiffer, who will be appearing in Dark Shadows, spoke with Empire Magazine and looked fondly back to twenty years ago -- when she first collaborated with Tim Burton, playing Catwoman in Batman Returns. When did she take the iconic role? "Immediately," the Dark Shadows star said. "I was halfway through the script when I said yes. Someone else was cast in the part and I remember being absolutely devastated and calling my agent and saying, 'How have I not had a meeting about this? Why have I not heard about it?' It was one of those things where Tim had someone in mind and went directly to them. So I was really bummed, but it was okay. When she [Annette Bening] fell out of it I was just leaving the country and got a call to say Tim wanted to meet me. So I went and he gave me the script and I got halfway through and said yes. But you know, honestly, I would have done it anyway, even without reading the script. But I was very happy that she was actually very well written."

"I think that she was someone so dark," added the actress on what it was that made the character so appealing to her. "Dark characters are always more interesting and she's really very dark. That whole split personality is interesting." Pfeiffer went on to reveal that she very nearly played Catwoman in a solo film helmed by Burton. "For a while, like a brief time, Tim was interested in maybe doing a Catwoman movie, but that didn't really last very long."

Photos: Pfeiffer, Burton, Depp on "Dark Shadows" Set

The website Gorgeous Pfeiffer has posted two scans from the newest issue of W Magazine, featuring notes from actress Michele Pfeiffer and photos of her, Tim Burton, Eva Green, and Johnny Depp making Dark Shadows:




LEAH GALLO; PETER MOUNTAIN/COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. PICTURES

Michael Gough, 1917-2011

Legendary actor and frequent Tim Burton collaborator Michael Gough died on Thursday, March 17th. He was 94.

Michael Gough had an extensive career with roles in over 150 films. He began acting in the 1940s and became a staple of the British Hammer horror films in the 1950s and 1960s (which Burton is quite fond of).

Gough is perhaps best known as playing Alfred Pennyworth in Burton's Batman in 1989 and Batman Returns in 1992. He played the same character in the Joel Schumacher sequels, such as the Burton-produced Batman Forever (1995). Gough continued to work with Burton in other films, playing Notary Hardenbrook in Sleepy Hollow (1999) and supplying the voice of Elder Gutneckt in Corpse Bride (2005). Gough came out of retirement to provide his voice to the Dodo Bird in Burton's Alice in Wonderland (2010), his final performance.

Pfeiffer Returns for "Dark Shadows"?

Michelle Pfeiffer is in negotiations to reteam with Tim Burton on Dark Shadows, says the Hollywood Reporter. The actress and the director have not worked together since Batman Returns in 1992, when she played Catwoman/Selina Kyle.

Although it is not confirmed if she will be in the film, Pfeiffer would probably play Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, "the reclusive matriarch of the Collins family which runs the Maine town."

Dark Shadows is intended to begin shooting this April.


Photo Credit: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

Video Interview: Danny Elfman

ARTISTdirect has an exclusive interview with Danny Elfman. There's also a special video from Elfman in which the composer talks about his earliest film music influences (especially Bernard Herrmann), stories behind making some of his most iconic music for Tim Burton's films, some of his favorite Burton characters, and much more. Click here to watch the video!

Here is the interview:

Is your music more inspired by a film's characters or the script? What exerts a heavier influence on your musical choices?

Well, I only tried working off the script once with Beetlejuice because I had some extra time and I thought I'd get a head start. Not one note I'd written from the script survived into the movie so I learned, especially with Tim Burton's films, never to anticipate what the movie's actually going to be like. The script is always one part of what's going to make a Tim Burton movie. I wait until I have a movie to look at, and I try to look at it with as blank of a mind as I possibly can—no expectations and no preconceived notions of what it's going to be.

Do you feel like you get especially close to each character, whether it's Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas or Batman?

Yeah, in the same manner that Tim clearly gets close to certain characters in his movies, I end up gravitating exactly the same way. There's no way not to—whether it's The Penguin or Catwoman. It doesn't matter who it is! It could be The Headless Horseman in Sleepy Hollow. You just gravitate towards a certain thing, and you find that's what pulling you along. Sometimes, you don't know what it's going to be. In Big Fish, clearly I was trying to follow the trajectory of the story and the main character but thematically I kept falling back to this mermaid character that we meet in this early fantasy that becomes a theme for Helena Bonham Carter's character later. I don't know why, but I just kept getting drawn to that as a common theme which carried me through. I never know where it's going to come from. It just does what it does.

On the box set, there's a fantastic piece called "Herrmann-esque Thing," it's a worktape from Batman. Is Bernard Herrmann someone you've always looked up to?

Well, he's the reason that I got into film music. When I met Tim on Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, I was in a band. It never occurred to me to become a film composer, but I was a fan of film music since about age eleven. I owe that strictly to Bernard Herrmann. I loved his scores. I think I was about eleven-years-old when I heard the score to The Day the Earth Stood Still, and it's the first time I noticed film music and a name. I realized, "This isn't just there. Somebody actually did it." Herrmann was always my god in terms of my love of film music.

It's interesting how everything culminated on his score for Taxi Driver.

More than interesting, it's incredible. I'll never be Herrmann in my life time, but he's the model I would strive for just in terms of the use of being inventive, melody and emotional content.

Do you have particular memories about the Sleepy Hollow score?

Yeah, it was just really fun. I didn't really know exactly what I was going to do with it. Once again, the main theme of "The Headless Horseman" wasn't The Horseman's first theme that I wrote. It became "Ichabod Crane's Childhood Theme." I ended up with this theme for him as a child and it started just following him. I just learned somewhere along the way never to argue with those impulses because they're doesn't have to be rhyme or reason. Nothing has to make sense. In fact, sometimes it's better that it doesn't. I'll look back later and go, "Well, I could see psychologically how this would've fit with this." At the time, I'm not thinking that way at all. It just kept coming back. I loved The Headless Horseman. I was incredibly proud of Tim because it's the first time he did a villain that was really a villain. He had no redeeming qualities. Normally, we love Tim's villains. They're usually the characters we associate with. The Headless Horsemen just cut off heads. There was no sense like, "Oh the poor guy, look at him stumbling around his house knocking everything over because he can't see anything while he's trying to make his cereal in the morning." [Laughs] He was a monster. When he killed that family and pulled up that little kid from under the planks, I was so proud of Tim [Laughs].

Music's the perfect way to get close to those emotions. It's the language of emotion.

Well, I guess! I'm never sure what I'm exactly tapping into when I'm doing it. I think that's for other people to judge better than me. I just go with it. With Tim's movies in particular, wherever he goes, I try to go.

How similar are orchestral music and rock 'n' roll?

They may complement each other, but not writing the music. They couldn't be farther apart. The years I had being in the band, I had to unlearn everything I'd done with them and move backwards in time to when I used to be in this musical theater group. Your sense with a band is always verse, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus—like that. When you're writing orchestral music, you have to get that out of your head really quick. There are so many places to go. You don't really a verse and a chorus. You have themes. There are limitless ways to present those themes. It doesn't really help. In a weird way, I think it's almost detrimental. I was able to figure it out, mostly due to my early studying of film scores. Although I wasn't actually studying, I was in my mind studying the scores of Herrmann, Max Steiner, Franz Waxman and, of course, Nino Rota who was also a huge influence on me and really inspired the score to Pee Wee's Big Adventure.

Is there a score that really sticks out for you?

It's a hard to pick a favorite. Listening back to everything, which was a very weird experience, there were bits of different scores where I was like, "Oh, I really like that moment." If I had to pick an overall score, it might be Edward Scissorhands. Probably, if nothing else, because it was following the intensity of Batman and we were totally left to our own in this weird world. I had no model, as I never seem to have, of what type of music will fit his films. It's just a score that I still have very fond memories. It was a very simple experience working on that film with him.

Expanded "Batman Returns" Score Available

La-La Land is proud to announce that they will be releasing an expanded, two-disc set of Danny Elfman's Batman Returns score very soon. This title, along with three other film scores, will be available for order November 30, 2010 at 1pm (PST) and will begin shipping the same day. Click here to learn the full details of the other scores, but here is the information on the Batman Returns release:

BATMAN RETURNS: LIMITED EDITION (2CD-SET) LLLCD 1153
Music by Danny Elfman
Limited Edition of 3500 Units
RETAIL PRICE: $29.98

La-La Land’s Expanded Archival Collection returns to Gotham for this 2CD remastered and expanded presentation of Danny Elfman’s magnificent score to the 1992 Warner Bros. motion picture blockbuster BATMAN RETURNS, starring Michael Keaton, Michelle Pfeiffer and Danny DeVito, directed by Tim Burton. Composer Elfman (BATMAN, MARS ATTACKS, WANTED, ALICE IN WONDERLAND) revisits his iconic theme and expertly weaves it into a sumptuous musical experience, bringing to life the film’s breathtaking action and rich emotional and psychological underpinnings. Produced by Neil S. Bulk, Dan Goldwasser and MV Gerhard and mastered by James Nelson from Shawn Murphy’s first generation three-track digital mixes, this limited edition release features more than 30 minutes of previously unreleased music, including alternate cues. The in-depth, exclusive liner notes are by John Takis and the art direction is by David C. Fein. This release is limited to 3500 Units.


TRACK LISTING:

Disc One: Total Time: 68:08

1. Birth of a Penguin/Main Title (5:38)
2. Penguin Spies* (1:09)
3. Shadow of Doom*/Clown Attack*/Introducing the Bat** (5:01)
4. Intro*/The Zoo**/The Lair (6:00)
5. Caught in the Act*/Uh-Oh Max* (1:58)
6. Kitty Party*/Selina Transforms** (5:30)
7. Penguin’s Grand Deed* (1:50)
8. The List Begins* (:45)
9. The Cemetery (2:56)
10. Catwoman Saves Joan*/The New Woman* (2:03)
11. Penguin’s Surprise (1:43)
12. Bad, Bad Dog**/Batman vs. Circus/Selina’s Shopping Spree** (5:42)
13. Cat Chase** (2:12)
14. Candidate Cobblepot* (:58)
15. The Plan*/Kidnapping* (2:32)
16. Sore Spots/Batman’s Closet* (3:22)
17. The Plot Unfolds* (1:15)
18. Roof Top Encounters** (4:49)
19. Batman’s Wild Ride** (4:19)
20. Fall From Grace** (4:17)
21. Revealed*/Party Crasher* (3:18)

Disc Two: Total Time: 71:27

1. Umbrella Source/The Children’s Hour/War** (7:53)
2. Final Confrontation**/Finale (9:15)
3. A Shadow of Doubt**/End Credits** (6:15)
4. Face to Face (4:18)
- performed by Siouxsie and the Banshees

ALTERNATE AND ALBUM CUES:

5. The Zoo (alternate)** (1:00)
6. The List Begins (alternate)* (:45)
7. Cat Chase (alternate ending)** (2:13)
8. Roof Top Encounters (original)** (4:49)
9. Fall From Grace (alternate ending)** (4:17)
10. The Lair, Part I (:57)
11. The Lair, Part II (4:51)
12. Selina Transforms, Part I (1:12)
13. Selina Transforms, Part II (4:15)
14. Batman vs. The Circus (2:35)
15. Cat Suite (5:43)
16. A Shadow of Doubt (alternate)**/End Credits (alternate) (7:02)

BONUS TRACK:

17. Super Freak* (3:23)
- composed by Rick James and Alonzo Miller
* previously unreleased
** contains previously unreleased material

Album Total Running Time: 139:35

No 'Alice' Sequel for Burton

Although the film was a massive success (making over $1 billion at the worldwide box office), Tim Burton said that he will not be making a sequel based on Alice in Wonderland, says WorstPreviews.com.

Burton has only done one sequel before, and that was Batman Returns after Batman. Even though he enjoyed making Batman Returns more than the original, Burton has said that he generally does not like making sequels. "That's what the material does, it leaves it open for you," he said about the ending. "It's kind of like dreams. It leaves it open, as it should, for interpretation."

The director said that some stories simply don't need second installments. "I got a lot of pressure to do a sequel to 'Nightmare Before Christmas,' and I just didn't want to do that, because some movies should just be left alone. I think it keeps their kind of spirit intact in a way."

Fortunately, Disney did not pressure Burton to make a sequel to Alice. "That was smart of them. They saw that it was kind of its own thing," he explained. "They didn't push for it at all, which I thought was really amazing, and smart, and right."

Burton's Art at Cannes

Tim Burton is the president of 63rd Cannes Film Festival jury this year. Burton was a member of the Cannes jury in 1997 and on the short film jury in 2006. To celebrate Burton, Cannes has decorated some of the festival theaters with Burton’s art. Here are some photos of Burton's artwork on display in the theater lobby. The concept artwork is from such films as Batman, Batman Returns, Beetlejuice, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Edward Scissorhands, Mars Attacks!, and Sleepy Hollow. Photographs provided by /Film:













Acclaimed Indian filmmaker and fellow Jury member Shekhar Kapur recounts what has happened at Cannes so far, and spoke very highly of Tim Burton.

"Tim Burton is a compassionate and gentle person and so eager to learn about other people and cultures. He is also completely fascinated by India. So I have invited him to come and see if there is something he would like to shoot in India," Kapur, 64, posted on his blog www.shekharkapur.com/blog.

"India is a country that accepts mythology and magic realism as an essential part of it’s culture, as does Tim Burton in his filmmaking. It would be fascinating to see Tim Burton’s visual take on some of our tradition folk tales," said Kapur.

"It’s very exciting to be on the Jury of the Cannes film festival. Especially when the Jury is headed by the man I affectionately (but also seriously) call ‘the Salvador Dali of Cinema’," wrote Kapur.


Indian filmmaker Shekhar Kapur

He also attended a gala dinner inspired from Burton's works. "For the first dinner with the jury, the chef had designed the dinner as an ‘inspiration’ from Tim Burton’s movies! Everything looked like it was from the Mad Hatter’s dining table (from Alice in Wonderland)," he posted.

"And while it was terrific looking and delicious, I kept waiting for the rice! After all what’s a meal without rice and dal, or roti and dal?"