Don’t Hold Your Breath For BEETLEJUICE 2

If you dive into the Birth.Movies.Death. archives, you'll discover that we've been reporting on Beetlejuice 2 not happening for five years.

It was happening. Then, a few years later, it was happening again. Then someone tricked Winona Ryder and Tim Burton into thinking it was for-realsies-this-time happening, and then - very abruptly - it wasn't. This is the sort of on-again, off-again nonsense we have come to expect from the perpetually-doomed reboot of The Crow, but I honestly expect more from the team behind Beetlejuice.

Anyway, here we go again: Michael Keaton says we should probably stop holding our breath for Beetlejuice 2. 

Asked if he knows anything about (Beetlejuice 2), Keaton says, “No. Zero. You always hear things, that this is happening, and people seem to know more about it than I do.”

While he loves the character, he says, “it’s possible that ship has sailed.”

With all due respect to Michael Keaton: no shit!

“The only way to do it is to do it right,” he says. “So much of it was improvised and so much was beautifully handmade by the artist that is Tim Burton. If you can’t get close to that, you leave it alone.”

Yes, let's.

He references remakes of other classic movies, noting, “There are certain movies that are like Indian burial grounds. You never ride over them. Bad s— happens if you cross that. You don’t touch certain things. They are sacred.”

I don't think you need to read too far in-between the lines to see what Keaton's saying here: Beetlejuice 2 is a go! 

For real, though: it's wildly unlikely this movie is ever going to come together, and that's a good thing. As Keaton himself points out, the original Beetlejuice was (and remains!) a singular thing, lightning in a bottle that I don't think anyone - even Tim Burton, and even Michael Keaton - could ever fully replicate. A Beetlejuice sequel is bad just as an idea, and I'm fairly certain it would be tremendously sad in practice. Every day that Beetlejuice 2 is not in production is a day we should be thankful for.

Anyway, let's hope this marks the end of our Beetlejuice 2 coverage.