Tim Burton didn’t summon Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis to reprise their ghostly roles for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice — and the legendary director is explaining why.
“I think the thing was for me I didn’t want to just tick any boxes,” Burton, 66, told People in an interview published on Wednesday, August 29. “So even though they were such an amazing integral part of the first one, I was focusing on something else.”
Davis, 68, and Baldwin, 66, starred in the 1988 horror comedy as recently deceased couple Adam and Barbara Maitland who died when they accidentally drove off a bridge while swerving to avoid hitting a dog. Now in the afterlife, the duo find themselves at odds with the Deetz family — Lydia (Winona Ryder), Delia (Catherine O’Hara) and Charles (Jeffrey Jones) — after they move into the Connecticut home in which the Maitlands used to live. In an attempt to reclaim their space, Adam and Barbara summon Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) to haunt the house until the Deetz’s move out.
For the 2024 sequel, which hits theaters on Friday, September 6, Burton teamed back up with a handful of the original cast including Keaton, Ryder and O’Hara, along with new faces Jenna Ortega, Willem Dafoe and Justin Theroux. Davis and Baldwin, however, do not make appearances.
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Burton shared that it was important for him to focus on the Deetz women after the loss of their patriarch, Charles.
“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,” he said, noting that decades needed to go by in order to make the sequel work. “And that [would] be the nucleus of it. I couldn’t have made this personally back in 1989 or whatever.”
While speaking to Entertainment Weekly earlier this month, O’Hara echoed Burton’s sentiment, saying the director was very passionate about Beetlejuice being Lydia’s story.
“And a little girl like that in that first Beetlejuice movie, you wonder, where do they go in life? What mistakes do they make? What do they do? Where are the relationships?” she told the outlet. “He was very fascinated by that and family and the connection of the three women.”
Despite Burton’s vision being clear, Ryder never pictured the character being a mom. “I just always thought she was just probably in her own world as she got older,” she told Slash Film in an August 25 interview. “Just sort of in the attic and happy, but alone.”
That changed, however, when Ryder was introduced to Ortega, and the two immediately connected in a special way.
“Once we got there and once Jenna and I bonded and once Justin [Theroux] came on board […] I mean, I think everyone who’s as old as I am now, we’ve all been in those things where you’re just like, ‘What was I thinking, in terms of the relationship I have?’” she said. “But I don’t know what young Lydia — I don’t think she would ever have expected to be in front of a camera.”
As for Ortega, the actress has previously worked with Burton on Netflix’s Wednesday — but stepping onto an iconic set like Beetlejuice was a different kind of experience.
“Never in my wildest dreams. I just never could have anticipated something like that happening,” Ortega gushed during an August episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “Lydia is the coolest character on the planet. Just everything about it, I was terrified.”
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Ortega added that while Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a continuation of the 1998 story, it’s also a completely “original” project on its own, as well.
“There’s so much in this film that’s new and refreshing and that’s what’s so wonderful about the worlds Tim creates,” she said. “You just want to keep exploring them and I don’t know whatever you’re anticipating but…you’re wrong.”
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice hits theaters on Friday, September 6.
