Tim Burton has spoken about his creative decision not to bring back two key characters from the original Beetlejuice film for the long-awaited sequel.
While original actors including Michael Keaton are back as the titular character, Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz and Catherine O’Hara as her stepmother Delia Deetz, two names are noticeably missing - Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis.
The actors played Adam and Barbara Maitland, a couple who were abruptly killed in a car crash and found themselves haunting their own home in Beetlejuice. By the end of the flick, they had learned to coexist with the Deetz family.
Thirty-six years have passed since the first film was released, but fans couldn’t help but wonder why the actors were not involved.
Addressing the issue in an interview with People Magazine, Burton said: “I think the thing was for me I didn’t want to just tick any boxes. So even though they were such an amazing integral part of the first one, I was focusing on something else.”
He continued: “A sequel like this, it really had to do with the time. That was my hook into it, the three generations of mother, daughter, granddaughter.
“And that [would] be the nucleus of it. I couldn’t have made this personally back in 1989 or whatever.”
The sequel also explains how the couple who were restricted to their former home, find a “loophole” that allows them to finally leave.
Davis seemed a bit bristly when asked whether she would be in the film, telling Entertainment Tonight: “I‘m not in the remake. Oh, you were expecting that I would be? Yeah, no, you know what? Because my theory is that ghosts don’t age... Not that I have.”
Insisting she had not even seen the trailer, which was first released in September 2023, she added: “Somebody said they were crying, so I have to see the trailer”.
