Tim Burton gives green light to Johnny Depp reunion

Posted On December 3, 2024December 3, 2024

Director Tim Burton has said he is “sure” his path will cross with actor Johnny Depp again, a collaboration that would mark their first since 2012’s Dark Shadows.

Burton’s professional partnership with Depp is one of the most popular and prolific in contemporary film. The pair worked closely for many decades on titles like Edward Scissorhands, Sweeney Todd, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sleepy Hollow, Alice in Wonderland, Corpse Bride, Ed Wood, and others.

Since 2012, however, the pair seem to have ventured in different directions, with Depp pivoting more intently towards the music industry and focussing on the long legal battle with ex-wife Amber Heard. Burton has also worked on other projects with 2019’s Dumbo and the more recent success of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

While Burton and Depp haven’t worked together for over ten years, the filmmaker remains open to the idea and instinctively feels like they will join forces once again at some point in the future. However, he also feels that the project they will work on is unlikely to be a sequel—namely, a follow-up to Edward Scissorhands.

Speaking to IndieWire at the Marrakech International Film Festival, Burton said he was “sure there will be” another project with the actor, adding that his casting decisions are always organic to the story he wants to tell.

“I never feel like, oh, I’m going to use this and that actor,” he said. “It usually has to be based on the project I’m working on. That’s what film is all about. It’s collaboration and bouncing ideas off the people around you.”

He also added that he has no desire to revisit Edward Scissorhands, mainly because it felt like a “one-off.” He said: “There are certain films I don’t want to make a sequel to. I didn’t want to make a sequel to that because it felt like a one-off thing.”

Another he wouldn’t revisit is The Nightmare Before Christmas for the same reason, and because “certain things are best left on their own and that for me is one of them.”

That said, Burton clearly couldn’t resist revisiting his 1988 opus Beetlejuice, which had an opening gross of $111 million and is close to achieving the $500 million milestone. Despite his broader aversion to sequels, Burton previously revealed at the Venice Film Festival why he wanted to revisit the coveted Winter River world.

Addressing rumours that he had decided to create the sequel for financial gain, he said he “didn’t even watch [the original] before” working on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice after saying the project wasn’t “for money.” He elaborated: “I wasn’t out to do a big sequel for money or anything like that, I wanted to make this for very personal reasons. Like I said, I didn’t watch the first movie to prepare for this. I remembered the spirit of it and I remembered everybody here.”

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