After Francis Ford Coppola, the Dardenne brothers and Jane Campion, it is the turn of the successful director, Tim Burton, to be awarded the 14th Prix Lumière on Friday 21 October. The filmmaker with an overflowing imagination and such a recognizable universe is rewarded for his entire career and his iconic films, Edward Scissorhands (1990), Big Fish (2003) or even Charlie and the chocolate factory (2005).
A little earlier in the day, he went to the Théâtre des Célestins in Lyon, to discuss in a more intimate setting with his audience. Applauded for long minutes when he entered, the 64-year-old filmmaker reacted with emotion: “I’m a little stressed because I’m not used to seeing so many people and especially to receiving such a welcome”. For almost two hours, the American filmmaker was bombarded with questions and thanked for his films. Questions in particular about his future projects, the next of which will see the light of day in less than a month. This is the series Wednesdayon the daughter of The Addams Familywhich will be released on November 23 on Netflix.
Attracted by darkness, gothic or death, Tim Burton was able, despite his macabre universe, to seduce a wide audience, from the youngest to the oldest. His films reveal a certain beauty in his stitched up or scarred monsters. “Monsters are totally part of my œwork. When I was little, I watched a lot of horror movies with monsters. They’re not mean to me, they don’t scare me”, he confides.
Ealready so young, he expressed himself through his imagination, he preferred drawing to words. Today, nothing has really changed and it is his fantastic and horrifying universe, straight out of his imagination, which constitutes the red thread of these films. “My training in animation inspired me a lot. It’s a very specific way of thinking and seeing things, you have to express yourself in a very visual way. That’s why I think all of my œwork is consistent”, he explains.
The filmmaker with an abundant universe also confided in his future projects. Absent since the release of Dumbo in 2019, he returns with his first series, Wednesday, November 23 on Netflix. Having left for a year in Romania for filming, Tim Burton particularly relished this new experience. “I really like the character of Wednesday in The Addams Family, so I really enjoyed making this series”, he confides.
The director considers that today Netflix “is a studio like any other“, and that the Hollywood industry always leaves room for different voices, “that can go under the radar, even if it’s a fight“. He says, on the other hand, that he understood at the time of Dumbo “to be probably ‘done’ with Disney, the studio where he started as animator: “I realized that I was like Dumboworking in a big circus I needed to escape from“.
These last few years have also allowed him to take a step back from his work: “The pandemic was a time of transition for cinema, all studios wanted to head to platforms, no one was quite sure where to go”. But after the pandemic, “I realized that cinema was still important, that it would always be there, that it was an art form that transcended everything“, he added. The director took the opportunity to find himself alone to think about what he wanted. “The next movie I’m going to do, I want it to be really important to me, so I’m taking my time, but I’m coming back”, he announced.