If you haven’t come to terms with the fact that sequels and remakes are just a normal, everyday part of the Hollywood machine, then you better get used to it quickly. The sooner you do, the sooner you can enjoy the prospect of a movie like Beetlejuice II happening, instead of immediately scorning the very thought.
Before you starting heating up with rage, no, no there’s not a sequel to Tim Burton‘s fantastic 1988 horror-comedy on the way…yet. This is simply a hypothetical question ignited by some interesting quotes excavated by Moviehole over the past couple months.
Apparently there was a script put together in the ’90s that saw the Deetz family moving to Hawaii where Charles Deetz (Jeffrey Jones) was building a resort that turned out to be located on top of a burial ground. The movie obviously never played out, but that’s where any sequel curiosity stems from.
Back in April, the site caught up with Geena Davis and asked what her thoughts were on a sequel ever happening. When asked, Davis stated:
I would do that! Thing is, do ghosts age? Wouldn’t we be stuck in the age we were? Alec [Baldwin] and I would have to look as we did then – who knows, maybe we could? I better get in touch with Tim Burton.
So naturally, while at the press junket for Pixar’s Toy Story 3, the site got their hands on Michael Keaton and asked the very same question. Surprisingly, Keaton wasn’t shy about the idea at all, making it very clear that “Oh I’d do that in a heartbeat. Absolutely, that’s the one thing I’d love to do again. That’s the only one I’d love to do.”
So that makes two of the four big stars that you would probably require for a sequel all set and ready to go. Davis does make a very solid point about the whole ghosts aging thing (she is a member of Mensa, you know) but surely when dealing with the supernatural there would be some kind of loop to use.
I say get Burton, get Winona Ryder, get Alec Baldwin, and do this immediately. As I said above, we need to know that this is just part of the game now, and whether a sequel ended up being horrible or not, it’d still be pretty cool to see where they went with it. Worst case scenario we just forget it ever happened; best case scenario we get a decent new sequel to watch with the first flick.
Tim Burton has made some good movies over the last decade, but aside from Big Fish, none of them have even come close to touching his work from the ’80s and early ’90s. Maybe the thing he needs right now is to get away from Johnny Depp collaborations and CGI/motion-capture effects, and step back into a world from his brilliant past.
What do you think, could Beetlejuice II actually happen and would it be worth making?
