The Juice Is Loose: The 36-Year Journey to Beetlejuice 2

In the aftermath of the movie’s success, a Beetlejuice sequel seemed inevitable. WB wanted it, director Tim Burton wanted it, and Keaton and Winona Ryder were keen to return. So, in 1990 Burton hired screenwriter Jonathan Gems to turn an idea he’d had into a full-blown script.

The resulting script was Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian, and it was even more zany than the first film! The plot would have followed the Deetz family as they moved to Hawaii, where patriarch Charles builds a new resort.

Everything seemed perfectly set up for the sequel to get the greenlight — but then WB made Burton an offer he couldn’t refuse. You see, the year after Beetlejuice, Burton had directed Batman, which was an even more colossal hit.

At one point, Burton hired Daniel Waters to re-write Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian — but then he was also waylaid by Batman Returns, as Burton wanted him to script that too. It left the sequel in limbo for a few years as different writers were brought in to breathe new life into it.

By 1997 things were looking bleak for this sunny incarnation of the sequel. Gems told Fangoria, “The Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian script is still owned by The Geffen Company, and it will likely never get made. You really couldn’t do it now anyway. Winona is too old for the role, and the only way they could make it would be to totally recast it.”

Interestingly, though, there was another Beetlejuice sequel script commissioned at the same time as Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian — it just isn’t as infamous as its tropical brethren. Warren Skaaren had been on re-write duties for the first film, and he was hired to do his own pass at a sequel.

Even though Beetlejuice would then pursue this dead guy’s fiancée in the real world, he reportedly wasn’t going to be presented as quite such a creep this time around. You see, after the first movie hit big at the box office, a Saturday morning cartoon was fast-tracked to air — and kids loved it.

By this point, even Keaton wanted Beetlejuice to be more heroic in the sequel. In fact, he wanted the horny bio-exorcist to try to “make something of himself.” In a meeting, someone suggested to Skaaren that Beetlejuice could even have a dog this time, as a way to humanize him!

In his draft, Skaaren wound up changing the nature of the afterlife which was established in the first film. This time, instead of an amusingly grotesque DMV with a never-ending queue, it was envisioned as a New-Age purgatory.

Putting together the script wasn’t easy for Skaaren, and he reportedly worried that he wouldn’t produce something the execs at WB — and Burton — liked. Of his relationship with the maverick director, he once said, “I’m sort of a boring middle-America guy and Tim’s very hip.”

After Skaaren’s sad passing, Beetlejuice in Love was scrapped, and the project was consigned to development Hell for most of the next two decades. In 2024 Burton told Entertainment Weekly that he and Keaton had spitballed a lot of ideas over the years, but nothing had stuck.

Larry Wilson — one of the first movie’s screenwriters — once told USA Today, “The bottom line is Tim Burton and Michael Keaton are not going to think about a Beetlejuice sequel unless it somehow catches the energy of the first film. And that’s not easy. Beetlejuice really was lightning in a bottle.”

It took until 2011 for any further movement on the sequel. This was when writer Seth Grahame-Smith — of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter fame — entered the scene alongside producing partner David Katzenberg.

“When Warner Bros. came to us about it, we said the only way we’d do it is if we got Tim’s blessing and involvement, and we got that,” Grahame-Smith told Entertainment Weekly at the time. “The star of the movie has to be Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice, and it’s a true continuation 26 years later.”

At this stage, though, Grahame-Smith hadn’t secured Keaton’s involvement in the sequel — he admitted, “We’re not there yet, because we don’t have a film to present to him.” He was eventually able to report a breakthrough — of sorts — in February 2012, though.

The young writer was adamant that Keaton was enthused about the prospect of donning the striped suit and green fright wig again. Grahame-Smith claimed, “He's been wanting to do it for 20 years and he'll talk to anybody about it who will listen.”

Fast-forward to November 2013 — two years after Grahame-Smith threw his hat in the ring — and Ryder told The Daily Beast, “I’m kind of sworn to secrecy. But it sounds like it might be happening.”

While Ryder’s enthusiasm gave fans reason for cautious optimism, she did temper that by saying, “I would never go near [it] if it was not Tim and Michael. Because those guys, I love.”

The star — who was promoting his villainous turn in the Robocop remake at the time — added, “I always said that’s the one thing I’d like to do again — if I ever did anything again. But it kind of required Tim to be involved some way or another.”

Eight months later, though, when Keaton was on the promotional trail for the Academy Award darling Birdman, he made some comments which made things about as clear as mud. He told MTV, “There is no script for the sequel… I don’t think.”

Keaton then called into question the importance of even having a script at all! He mused, “The problem is, a lot of it was created on the set with Tim and I. A lot of that didn't exist on paper, and you can’t really write that.”

In October 2014 Keaton had been telling the press there was no script, but barely two months later, Burton said the exact opposite! He told IGN, “There’s only one Beetlejuice, and that’s Michael. There is a script, and I would love to work with him again. I think there is now a better chance than ever.”

By the time January 2015 rolled around, though, these questions would become moot points, because it was all systems go on Beetlejuice 2! Grahame-Smith told Entertainment Weekly that he had finished a number of drafts of the script, had emailed back and forth with Keaton and Burton, and confirmed Ryder’s involvement.

To the eternal disappointment of fans, though, the end of the year came and went with no Beetlejuice 2 announcement. Then, when Burton was promoting Miss Peregrine in May 2016 he poured cold water on the whole thing again.

In 2017 writer Mike Vukadinovich was hired to do a new pass on Grahame-Smith’s script, but aside from that announcement, there was total silence surrounding Beetlejuice 2 for a few years. This new draft mustn’t have moved anybody, though, because in 2019 an executive told USA Today, “The project isn’t in active development.”

The answer is, of course, nope! On February 28, 2022, the sequel got the shot in the arm it needed: Plan B, the production company created by A-lister Brad Pitt, announced that it had revived the project at WB.

Finally, after 35 long years, Beetlejuice 2 officially entered production on May 11, 2023. In what is the perfect encapsulation of the constant struggle to bring the film kicking and screaming to the world, though, the shoot soon had to shut down because of the Hollywood actors’ strike!

In September 2023 the long-suffering director told The Independent, “I feel grateful we got what we got. Literally, it was a day-and-a-half. We know what we have to do. It is 99 percent done.”

To the delight of fans, Keaton and Ryder weren’t the only familiar faces who reprised their role in Beetlejuice 2, which was officially titled Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Catherine O’Hara, who played Delia Deetz, had also returned and was ecstatic to actually have one-on-one scenes with Keaton as the lecherous ghoul this time around.

“It was just so crazy and thrilling, really to just be face-to-face with Beetlejuice,” O’Hara enthused. “He looks the same! Beetlejuice has aged very well.” She also praised how youthful Ryder still looks, saying, “Winona, God bless her, looks the same. She looks beautiful; beautiful skin.”

Keaton backed up that shooting the movie had been a blast. In fact, he dubbed it “the most fun I've had on set in a long time.” He admitted that, in Hollywood, that sense of enjoying your work isn’t always easy to come by, but this more than lived up to his expectations.

Keaton told People, “I was totally not interested in doing something where there was too much technology. It had to feel hand-made.” For an actor who has spent a good chunk of his recent years in special effects-heavy behemoths like Spider-Man: Homecoming, it was a welcome change of pace.

When it came time for Keaton to finally don the white makeup, black eye paint, and wild green hair again, Burton described it as “a weird out-of-body experience.” But becoming Beetlejuice again after so long was like riding a bicycle for Keaton: he simply picked up right where he left off.

Intriguingly, Burton also revealed what it was about the sequel that finally convinced him to pull the trigger. And, true to his word from many years prior, it had been an emotional reason. He said, “I so identified with the Lydia character.”

On March 21, 2024, the world finally got what it had been waiting 36 years for — a glimpse of their favorite wacky bio-exorcist and the quirkily Gothic world he inhabits. The teaser trailer for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice hit the world wide web like a ton of green-haired bricks, and fans were delighted by it.

Ortega told Vanity Fair, “I don’t know how much I’m allowed to say, but I am Lydia Deetz’s daughter, so I’ll give that away. She’s weird, but in a different way and not in the way you’d assume, I would say.”

We’ll leave the final word to the man himself, though. Keaton revealed just before the trailer hit the web that he’d actually watched a rough cut of the movie. During an appearance on The Jess Cagle Show, he said, “I’ve seen it now.”

It was clearly an emotional experience for Keaton to return to the role that made him famous, and perhaps that’s why he’s mostly avoided watching the first movie over the years. In fact, he admitted that he’d only sat through Beetlejuice once or twice in 36 years!

This reverence for the first film — coupled with the fear that going back to the character might somehow taint its legacy — is certainly what kept Beetlejuice 2 mired in development Hell for so long. As Keaton confessed, “To do it again was a little, I guess, intimidating — and I was nervous about it.”