Warner Bros. Entertainment · The Geffen Film Company · Q65557474 · 92 min
Box office
$73.7M worldwide on a $15M budget
Honors
Academy Awards — 1 win, 1 nominationKids' Choice Award — 1 nominationAll 1 wins · 2 nominations on record
Academy Awards: Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Scholarship
Named in the title of 10 peer-reviewed works
Examples
Beetlejuice, 2006
Cosa Nostra #33 – BeetleJuice — Institutional Repository of the National University Open and Distance UNAD (Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia), 2024
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice may have problems – but it’s Tim Burton’s best film in years, 2024
Sources: Wikidata · OpenAlex. The record of the motion picture, not an assessment of this cell.
FILM NOTES
Beetlejuice arrived from The Geffen Company through Warner Bros. in 1988, directed by Tim Burton in only his second feature. It paired gothic art direction with screwball comedy, becoming a box office success and a cult favorite that helped define Burton's early visual language. The film's blend of afterlife bureaucracy and suburban satire gave Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis roles that remain beloved among genre and comedy fans alike, and the picture's influence carried into television, merchandise, and eventually a stage musical.
This cell centers on Adam and Barbara Maitland, the recently deceased couple whose attachment to their home and each other anchors the story's emotional core amid its chaos. Collectors seek Maitland material because Baldwin and Davis provide the human, married warmth against which the film's supernatural antics play out. A cell simply called Barbara and Adam suggests a quieter frame of the pair together, the domestic devotion that makes their haunting sympathetic rather than frightening, a keepsake from the couple at the story's heart.
Authentication Findings8 checks
Consistent with a 35mm colour release print of Beetlejuice (1988).
Gauge
35mm; the strip holds three frames, each showing four perforations per frame on the visible top edge.
Perforations
Four per frame on the top edge; bottom edge perforations are partially visible and appear evenly spaced with cleanly punched rectangular corners.
Soundtrack
Not visible in this capture; the area beside the picture frame is obscured by the curl and shadow of the strip.
Edge print
Not visible in this capture.
Base & colour
Base appears warm cream-to-ivory in the clear margins; the dye image reads with strong, saturated colour suggesting no significant fading.
Projection history
Light longitudinal lines are visible running parallel to the film edge across all three frames, consistent with projection wear.
Picture
Positive colour image; all three frames appear to be consecutive frames from a single shot, consistent with a release print of Beetlejuice (1988).
Era check
The saturated colour positive image on a warm-base stock with standard 35mm four-perforation layout is consistent with a theatrical release print from the late 1980s.
Read from the original intake capture shown below. Observations only — film is authenticated, not graded.
This original motion picture film element has been examined and authenticated by Crown Grading in partnership with National Film Vault, and encapsulated for archival preservation.
Why so little survivesRelease prints were leased to theaters, not sold. When the run ended they went back to the distributor to be destroyed, and most were. What collectors hold today came from the prints that escaped that order, and no new 35mm prints of these films are being struck.
CROWN SERIAL 000063321
Original Film CaptureAs received
Photographed on the light panel at intake, before encapsulation — tap to open full size
Tap to enlarge
