Tim Burton is providing a ghoulish addition to Turkey Day!
The filmmaker behind “Beetlejuice,” “Edward Scissorhands,” “Sweeney Todd” and “Alice in Wonderland” has designed a new balloon for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
A creepy, blue, stitch-faced boy will float alongside Spider-Man and Snoopy as they swoop through the city’s streets to Herald Square.
“It’s such a surprise to be asked, and it was great,” Burton told The New York Times.
“It’s such a surreal thing that you don’t even believe what you’re hearing. Somebody’s trying to play a joke on you or something. It had that kind of feeling.”
Burton’s bulbous balloon character is called B. Boy, or simply B. for short.
The director, whose macabre sensibilities have turned him into one of Hollywood’s biggest successes, even has a wacky origin story to go with the character.
B. was created, not unlike Frankenstein’s monster, from leftover balloons used in children’s parties at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.
Poor B. was forbidden from playing with other children because of his jagged teeth and blue skin stitched together like a baseball. So he hid in a basement lair, where he obsessed over the Albert Lamorisse film “The Red Balloon” and dreamed one day he would be able to fly.
“There’s always been something about balloons,” Burton said. “You see them deflated and you see them floating. There’s something quite beautiful and tragic and sad and buoyant and happy, all at the same time.”
Parade organizers have long tried to recruit Burton for the event, and stepped up their efforts after seeing his wildly successful retrospective last year at the Museum of Modern Art.
In the lobby of the museum, guests were greeted by a giant, inflatable, light bulb-like character that Burton just happened to have dubbed Balloon Boy.
Once he agreed, the only direction they gave him was: “Try to stay away from something skinny and pointy.”
Burton is no stranger to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
In his 1989 film “Batman,” the evil Joker unleashes a diabolical plot to kill the citizens of Gotham City at a gaudy parody of the parade. He lures in unsuspecting gawkers — before blasting them with deadly gas-filled balloons.
It was unclear yesterday if Macy’s executives knew about the scene when they asked Burton to design a real balloon for them.