Michael Keaton Once Shared He’d Only Do a ‘Beetlejuice’ Sequel Under 1 Special Condition

Michael Keaton once opened up about why he was hesitant to return for a ‘Beetlejuice’ sequel.

Actor Michael Keaton recently reprised one of his most iconic roles Beetlejuice for a long-awaited sequel that’s been two decades in the making. But he needed certain requirements met before committing himself to the role again.

What Michael Keaton said about a potential ‘Beetlejuice’ sequel

Tim Burton’s 2024 sequel to Beetlejuice, titled Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, features Keaton reuniting with a few familiar faces. Both Winona Ryder and Catherine O’ Hara joined Keaton in returning for the film. But the sequel would also welcome newcomers like Jenna Ortega.

There have been talks of a second Beetlejuice movie from as long as the original came out. But at one point, Burton wasn’t too keen on a sequel, unsure if he could recapture the integrity of the first film.

“I mean, I’ve often resisted re-visiting. Like in the case of Nightmare and Beetlejuice, they asked me to do sequels and I just said no… I wanted to keep the integrity of those particular things. Those movies were special to me,” Burton once told Games Radar.

Keaton was once also at a phase in his career where he was very cautious about his film choices. According to an interview he did with BBC, this was why he took a long hiatus from the movie industry.

“I reached a point where I didn’t think I was that great. I’m not being humble. I was looking at things and thinking, ‘You’re really not that good in that.’ I think I was becoming boring as well as bored,” he said. “It was nobody’s fault except mine, probably and it might not even be my fault. Also I would get scripts and think ‘What’s the point of this?’ I turned an awful lot of things down. That can sound very elitist, but the truth is 70 per cent of the stuff just wasn’t very good. The other thing is that I wasn’t getting really great stuff. So it was a combination of wanting to really go back to work again and very quietly and slowly and methodically start to plot a course where I would start to get what I wanted.”

This made doing sequels a very sensitive concept for Keaton.

“I don’t necessarily say, ‘I don’t do sequels.’ I did a sequel once and I wouldn’t necessarily not do a sequel. The idea doesn’t thrill me, but I would do a sequel if it was the right thing,” he said.

Keaton extended this same attitude to Beetlejuice.

“But Beetlejuice is very, very special. The only way I would do it is if it could be in that ballpark – in the same zone of creativity as the first one,” Keaton said. “Otherwise I’d want to leave that alone, I think. I just enjoyed it so much because it’s the only thing I’ve done – except maybe Much Ado About Nothing – that comes closest to purely original, authentic art on the screen that I’ve done. That’s a rush, when you get that, and you want to do it again, you know, but you don’t want to screw up.”

Why Tim Burton changed his mind about doing a ‘Beetlejuice’ sequel

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice met the appropriate conditions for Keaton to return. According to Burton, the actor didn’t miss a beat after putting back on his zebra-striped suit. So much so Keaton made it feel like no time at all had passed.

“We didn’t rehearse, we didn’t do anything, right? He comes on, and it was truly like demon possession,” Burton told Screen Rant about Keaton. “It felt like a time warp. You’re right, it was unnerving. It was great, and it was exciting, but it was really also disturbing.”

Burton also explained why he decided to return to the world of Beetlejuice 35 years after the original film.

“It’s been asked from the very beginning, but nothing clicked. And truly, it couldn’t have happened until now. It was only fairly recently, because of all this talk, I just put all the noise away,” Burton said. “I just go, ‘Okay, I love the Lydia character.’ That was the character that I connected with, this kind of teenager that I remember being. So I go like, ‘Well, what happened to this person 35 years later?’ What a weird thing, you go from cool teenager to some kind of f***ed up adult or whatever. And what relationships do you have when you have kids? What’s your relationship with that?”

“It’s not something I could have done back then. It’s only something you could do once you’ve experienced those things yourself. For me, it became a very personal movie; kind of a weird family movie,” he added.