Winona Ryder says she is in the Beetlejuice 2

With Tim Burton in need of a hit after three duds in a row (Dark Shadows, Frankenweenie, Big Eyes) and Michael Keaton hotter than ever thanks to Birdman, there’s never been a better time for a Beetlejuice 2. Burton and Keaton have both publicly cemented their involvement, but after years of rumors, Lydia Deetz herself, Winona Ryder, has finally confirmed to NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers that she will join the ghost with the most in the sequel. As Harry Belafonte would sing, “OK, I believe you!”

“I think I can confirm it because Tim Burton did this interview,” Ryder told Meyers. “It was very hush-hush, top secret, ‘I don’t know what may happen, I don’t know,’ and then he was doing some press for ‘Big Eyes’ and he did an on-camera interview and he said, ‘Oh yeah, we’re doing it and Winona’s gonna be in it.’ So can I say…? I mean if he said it. But I really don’t know much more than anybody else.”

During promotion for Big Eyes last year, Burton talked to CS about the long-gestating sequel, which has been under consideration since the early ’90s, at one time under the title Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian.

“It’s a character that I love and I miss and I miss actually working with Michael,” said Burton in December. “There’s only one Betelgeuse. We’re working on a script and I think it’s probably closer than ever and I’d love to work with him again.”

Frequent Burton collaborator Seth Grahame-Smith (Dark Shadows, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, the in-development animated movie Night of the Living) and David Katzenberg (“The Goldbergs”) are penning the script for the currently-untitled Beetlejuice 2, which may be Burton’s next directorial project after Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.