A Beloved Michael Keaton Movie Is Killing It On Streaming
Beetlejuice, starring Michael Keaton, is one of the most-watched movies on HBO Max right now.
Some seasons are just built for movies; The Christmas holiday is maybe the most famous for movies with Home Alone, A Christmas Story, and the never-ending debate of Die Hard. However, a close contender, and arguably more suited for the holiday movie, is Halloween; with an entire genre of films designed to scare its audience to the brink of panic, scary movies have become one of the best Halloween traditions each year. With that being said, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that one of the most famous Halloween movies, 1988’s Beetlejuice starring Michael Keaton, is making a comeback on the streaming charts, landing in third place on HBO Max according to Flix Patrol.
Beetlejuice is a Tim Burton brainchild about a recently deceased couple, Barbara and Adam Maitland (Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin), who are trapped in their home as ghosts when it is sold to an insufferable family from the city. They try to scare the new couple, Charles and Delia Deetz (Jeffrey Jones and Catherine O’Hara), out of the house, but they remain invisible to everyone in the home other than the couple’s daughter, Lydia (Wynonna Rider). In their desperation, the couple turns to a self-proclaimed bio-exorcist named Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), not knowing what they released into the world. Betelgeuse does what he says he will do and scares the Deetz family to the point of panic but, in the process, swindles his way into a marriage to Lydia that will allow him to live in and create chaos in the mortal world.
This wasn’t the only time Tim Burton would collaborate with Michael Keaton. While he had been in multiple tv series and the comedy Mr. Mom, Keaton was a relative unknown until he had his career-breaking period with Tim Burton in 1988 with Beetlejuice and in 1989 with Batman. With the success of Mr. Mom as an acclaimed comedy, Keaton spent the next decade trying to break out of that comedic stereotype, and he was able to do so primarily due to his two films with Burton and another 1988 critical masterpiece, Clean and Sober, where he played a drug-addicted realtor. Keaton and Burton would team up again with a sequel to his Dark Knight outing in 1992’s Batman Returns, but after Warner Bros. dropped Burton for the third film, Keaton turned down $15 million to reprise because he didn’t like the new script.
Wynonna Rider can also attribute much of her success to Tim Burton with her role in Beetlejuice, like Michael Keaton. She had only done a few films before landing the role as the gothic kid in the house, able to see dead people and eventually gaining a new family among the recently departed. Following that role, she landed Heathers alongside Christian Slater and eventually teamed up with Tim Burton again in the Johnny Depp-led film Edward Scissorhands. Since then, she has starred with some of Hollywood’s most prominent actors, including Dracula with Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves, and Gary Oldman, Reality Bites with Ethan Hawke and Ben Stiller, and Mr. Deeds with Adam Sandler.
The rest of the cast wasn’t hurt by the experimental film with an unknown commodity, Michael Keaton, either. Geena Davis had been doing steady work, but after Beetlejuice, she ended up in Thelma & Louise with Susan Sarandon in 1991 and A League of Their Own with Tom Hanks in 1992. Alec Baldwin scored five releases in 1988, among them Beetlejuice, and that explosion is a significant reason he landed a career-making role in The Hunt for Red October, the first to bring Tom Clancy’s masterful Jack Ryan to life on screen. Catherine O’Hara was perhaps best known for her role as Kevin’s mom on Home Alone before she found a recent career resurgence on the comedy Schitt’s Creek; she also returned to Tim Burton for his animated film, Frankenweenie.
In the HBO Max rankings, Beetlejuice sits behind only Green Lantern: Beware my Power (a new DC Animated project for the streaming service following John Stewart) and perhaps the year’s best horror film, Barbarian. While dozens of new scary movies appear every year both in the theaters and on streaming services, the fact that a film from 1988 is number three demonstrates its staying power among its fans. And it also shows that Michael Keaton is still one of the most in-demand actors 30 years later.
