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IT’S (almost) SHOWTIME! Brad Pitt’s production company Plan B is finally reviving a long-awaited Beetlejuice sequel with Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder reportedly back as Beetlejuice and Lydia Deetz respectively. The two are reprising their characters from Tim Burton’s 1988 classic comedy Beetlejuice.
The 1988 film centres around Adam and Barbara Maitland, played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis. A married couple who dies and has to learn to situate themselves as ghosts in their secluded house in Winter River, Connecticut. When a new family, the Deetzes – Charles (Jeffrey Jones), Delia (Catherine O’Hara), and their daughter Lydia (Ryder) – moves in against the Maitlands’ wishes, they reluctantly hire a loud, boisterous, self-proclaimed freelance bio-exorcist who goes by the name Beetlejuice (Keaton) to get rid of the newcomers.
The film became a hit and spawned an animated series in 1989, several video games in the early 90s as well as a Broadway stage musical in 2019. Despite the success in these various adaptations, a sequel has struggled to get off the ground.
The much-anticipated Beetlejuice 2 has been in development struggle for more than thirty years. Jonathan Gems wrote a script in 1990 for a sequel, under the title Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian but it fell through in 1997.
In September 2011, screenwriter Seth Grahame-Smith who previously worked with Burton on Dark Shadows, was hired to write and produce the sequel. He is still attached to it. In April 2019, the project was shelved by Warner Bros.
With Keaton and Ryder returning and Pitt’s Plan B onboarding, it seems like the sequel is slowly coming together. Whilst a cause for celebration, it will likely take a while more before fans can return to Neitherworld.