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 in 1988 as a Warner Bros. release directed by Tim Burton, early proof of his knack for turning macabre premises into mainstream comedy. Michael Keaton's manic performance as the title ghost, paired with Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis as the recently deceased Maitlands, gave the studio a sleeper hit that spawned an animated series, merchandise lines, and eventually a stage musical and sequel. The film's blend of practical effects, gallows humor, and afterlife bureaucracy became a genre touchstone, and it remains one of Burton's most fondly remembered works from his formative period.
This piece brings together the three central figures of that story on a single strip of film: Betelgeuse the freelance bio-exorcist, and Barbara and Adam Maitland, the ordinary couple whose deaths set the plot in motion. Collectors prize this grouping because it captures the film's core dynamic in one frame, the haunted meeting the haunters. Whether drawn from a trailer reel or a general release print, a cell naming all three together represents a key connective moment in the picture's structure, the point where the living and the dead are forced into uneasy partnership.
Authentication Findings8 checks
Consistent with a 35mm colour theatrical release print of Beetlejuice (1988).
Gauge
35mm, four perforations per frame on both edges; the strip holds two frames.
Perforations
Four per frame on both edges, evenly spaced, cleanly punched with no visible torn or deformed holes.
Soundtrack
A variable-area optical track is visible running along one edge beside the picture area, appearing as a dual bilateral variable-area stripe.
Edge print
Not visible in this capture at sufficient resolution to read manufacturer codes or key numbers.
Base & colour
Base appears with a slight warm-cream tint consistent with an acetate safety base; the dye image reads as a colour positive with no obvious red shift or significant fading.
Projection history
Light longitudinal scratches are visible running along the length of the strip, consistent with a projected print.
Picture
Positive colour image; the two frames appear to be consecutive frames from a single continuous shot, and the costuming and set dressing are consistent with Beetlejuice (1988).
Era check
The dual bilateral variable-area optical soundtrack, colour positive print on a warm acetate base, and perforation style are all 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 000063322
Original Film CaptureAs received
Photographed on the light panel at intake, before encapsulation — tap to open full size
Tap to enlarge
