A BEETLEJUICE Sequel Non-Update

If you are going to pick someone to write a sequel to the 1988 comedy classic Beetlejuice, Seth Grahame-Smith is probably the guy to do so. With the horror comedy novels Pride And Prejudice And Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter to his credit, he certainly sounds like the project would be right up his alley. And he seems to think so too. But in an interview Film School Rejects, he also stated that although Warner Brothers has hired him to to write a script for a sequel, he doesn’t want to be the one to ruin the project.

When Warner Bros. first talked to me about it I said there needs to be two things to happen before I would even consider it,” said Grahame-Smith. “For one, it couldn’t be some kind of reboot or remake with a different actor playing Beetlejuice. I wasn’t interested in that. I wanted actual Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice and an actual sequel to the movie. Two, I said I’d only do it if Tim gave it his blessing and guided the process. I got both of those things: Tim to say if there was a good enough script he would help with the development of it and I got Michael Keaton to say, if the script was good enough, he’d be open to doing it.

You know, what I keep telling people is I don’t want to do it unless we’re really sure that it’s worthy. The original is one of my favorite movies, so I don’t want to make Son of the Mask. I would rather kill myself than destroy the legacy of one of my favorite films. Right now I owe people an idea and a treatment, and that’s where it is right now. We’re a little while off from any news or movement from that.

A Beetlejuice sequel has been something that the studio has wanted to get made for a long time now. Director Kevin Smith has recounted the tale that back in the early 1990s when he was meeting with studios following the breakout notice he got with his debut films Clerks, he had met with some executives at Warners who tried to pitch him on directing a sequel titled Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian. Actually, that was one of two Beetlejuice scripts that the studio had in development, the other being Beetlejuice In Love. Needless to say, and perhaps thankfully, nothing ever came of these two ideas. And I certainly don’t think that Grahame-Smith has anything to worry about either.

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About Rich Drees 7277 Articles
A film fan since he first saw that Rebel Blockade Runner fleeing the massive Imperial Star Destroyer at the tender age of 8 and a veteran freelance journalist with twenty-five years experience writing about film and pop culture. He is a member of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle.
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Stevie
Stevie
May 5, 2012 2:31 pm

Having seen the original beetlejuice and the the performance of Sam Rockwell in the green mile I would have thought him to be an ideal choice to play beetlejuice in the follow up movie.very similar behaviour’s played by micheal Keaton and Sam Rockwell.