Tim Burton talks about fears of AI as an exhibition of his work opens in London

LONDON (AP) – The imagination of Tim Burton Created ghosts and ghouls, Martians, monsters and misfits — all to be featured in an exhibition opening in London just in time for Halloween.

But do you know what really scares him? Artificial intelligence.

Burton said Wednesday that seeing a website that used AI to blend his drawings with Disney characters “really pissed me off.”

“It wasn't an intellectual thought — it was just an internal, visceral feeling,” Burton told reporters during a preview of “The World of Tim Burton” exhibit at London's Design Museum. “I looked at those things and I thought, 'Some of these are pretty good.' … (But) it gave me a weird kind of scary feeling inside.”

Barton said he thinks AI is unstoppable, because “once you do it, people will do it.” But when asked whether he would use technology in this work, he quipped.

“To take over the world?” He smiled.

The exhibit reveals Burton as an analog artist, who began experimenting with paint and colored pencil in his suburban California home as a child in the 1960s.

“I wasn't a very verbal person early on,” Burton said. “Drawing was a way to express myself.”

Decades later, he began drawing ideas after films including “Edward Scissorhands,” “Batman,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Beetlejuice.” The exhibit includes 600 items from movie studio collections and Burton's personal archives, and traces those ideas as they progressed from sketches through collaborations with set, production and costume designers en route to the big screen.

London is the exhibition's final stop on a decade-long tour of 14 cities in 11 countries. It has been reconfigured and expanded with 90 new objects to run in the British capital, where Burton has lived for a quarter of a century.

The show includes early drawings and oddities, including a competition-winning “Crush Litter” sign a teenage Burton designed for a Burbank garbage truck. There is also a recreation of Burton's studio, a tray of paints and a mug filled with “Curse of Frankenstein” pencils.

Along with hundreds of drawings, there are props, puppets, set designs and iconic costumes, including Johnny Depp's “Edward Scissorhands” talons and the black latex Catwoman costume worn by Michelle Pfeiffer in “Batman Returns.”

“We had very generous access to Tim's archive in London, full of thousands of drawings, stop-motion films, sketches, character notes, storyboards of poems,” said exhibition curator Maria McClintock. It was a fun challenge – but definitely a challenge.”

Viewing it wasn't an entirely fun experience for Burton, who said he was unable to look closely at the items on display.

“It's like watching your dirty laundry hang on the wall,” he said. “It's quite amazing. It's a little overwhelming.”

Burton, whose long-awaited horror-comedy sequel “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” Opened at the Venice Film Festival in August, is currently filming the second season of Netflix's Addams Family-themed series “Wednesday.”

These days he is a major Hollywood director whose American Gothic style has earned him an epithet – “Burtoneqsue.” But he still feels like an outsider.

“Once you feel that way, it doesn't leave you,” he said.

“Every film I've done has been a struggle,” he added, noting that early films like 1985's “Pee-wee's Big Adventure” and 1988's “Beetlejuice” received some negative reviews. “It seems like it was a pleasant, gentle, easy journey, but everyone leaves their emotional scars.”

McClintock says Burton is “a deeply emotional filmmaker.”

“I think that's what drew me to his films as a kid,” he said. “He really celebrates the misunderstood outcast, the benevolent monster. So spending so much time on his brain and his creative process has been quite a strange but fun experience.

“His films are often called dark,” he added. “I don't agree with that. And if they are dark, there is a kind of hope in the darkness. You always want to hang out in the dark in his films.”

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“The World of Tim Burton” opens Friday and runs through April 21, 2025.

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This story corrects that Catwoman's costume is from “Batman Returns”, not “Batman”.