Tim Burton Feels He ‘Could Have Retired’ After ‘Dumbo,’ but ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ Helped ‘Reenergize’ Him

Harrison Richlin
·3 min read

Disney has done a lot for Tim Burton, from offering him an apprenticeship in animation following his graduation from CalArts to producing his first live-action short film “Frankenweenie” (as well as the feature animated version), but his experience making “Dumbo” for the Mouse House was anything but magical. In a recent interview with Variety, Burton shared that the circumstance was so dire, he even considered retiring following its release. However, his work on the Netflix series “Wednesday” and the upcoming legacy sequel “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” helped him find his love for the craft again.

“Honestly, after ‘Dumbo,’ I really didn’t know. I thought that could have been it, really. I could have retired, or become… well, I wouldn’t have become an animator again, that’s over. (Laughs) But this did reenergize me,” Burton said of working on “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.” “Oftentimes, when you get into Hollywood, you try to be responsible to what you’re doing with the budget and everything else but sometimes you might lose yourself a little bit. This reinforced the feeling for me that it’s important that I do what I want to do, because then everybody will benefit.”

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Earlier in the interview, Burton reflected on his relationship with studios as a whole, describing the push and pull that’s typical as far as convincing executives that they’re money is being used wisely.

“I never felt like I was misusing company funds with studios, if you know what I mean. But it also just felt kind of pure because I wasn’t really a proper filmmaker, so I just did things that I felt was me,” said Burton. “It felt like that’s why they wanted me. It’s always been a funny struggle, this sort of thing where they want you but they don’t want you. But at the beginning, I don’t think, and still to this day to some extent, they don’t really know what I’m doing, so they can’t really comment on it.”

Discussing Disney specifically, Burton recalled how, while he was an animator and designer in the 1980s, the studio went through “maybe three different regimes.” This would effectively create a new company each time new bosses came in and so while he felt tied to it in many ways, it was hard to deal with the constant shifts.

“Going back to the ’80s, you had the animation building that was all designed for artists. By 1986, I was the last artist in there because all the artists were kicked out and put in a warehouse in Glendale and it was all then overtaken by the execs,” Burton said to Variety. “I saw this transition of things a long time ago. And now, it’s bigger franchises, less little things. I don’t like it but it is what it is.”

Burton first acknowledged his distaste with Disney in 2019 following the release of “Dumbo.” Speaking at at the Lumière Festival in Lyon after receiving the Prix Lumière, he said, “My history is that I started out there. I was hired and fired like several times throughout my career there. The thing about ‘Dumbo,’ is that’s why I think my days with Disney are done, I realized that I was Dumbo, that I was working in this horrible big circus and I needed to escape. That movie is quite autobiographical at a certain level.”

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” releases in theaters September 6 following a world premiere at Venice Film Festival.

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