- Baldwin and Davis were two of the lead characters from the 1988 classic
- Original cast members Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara have returned for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
- The sequel has received rave reviews after it’s premiere at Venice Film Festival
Tim Burton has lifted the lid on why Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis were not cast in his new Beetlejuice sequel, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, despite playing two of the lead roles in the 1988 original.
In the late ’80s cult classic, Baldwin and Davis play married Connecticut couple Adam and Barbara Maitland, who die in a car crash and begin attempting to haunt their old house when it is bought by the Deetz family. When their initial attempts fail, they desperately seek out the help of Keaton’s Betelgeuse, a freelance bio-exorcist to help scare the new occupants out of their old house.
But with Keaton, Catherine O’Hara and Winona Ryder returning for the long awaited sequel, why was there no space for Baldwin and Davis?
Speaking to People, Burton explained, “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.”
In the sequel, Ryder’s character, Lydia Deetz, now has a daughter, played by Jenna Ortega, who, upon returning to the house along with her mother and grandmother (played by O’Hara), accidentally reopens the door to the afterlife, once again allowing Betelgeuse to wreak havoc.
“A sequel like this, it really had to do with the time,” Burton continued. “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.”
Davis has previously commented on the situation, speaking to Entertainment Tonight back in April of this year that her theory behind not being cast was that “ghosts don’t age”.
“No, I’m not. 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.
“Our characters were stuck the way they looked when they died forever, so it’s been a while, it’s been a minute.”
The sequel, meanwhile, has already been a huge hit at Venice Film Festival, receiving a rapturous four-minute standing ovation. And, despite the lack of Baldwin and Davis, has some brilliantly cast new additions, including Monica Bellucci as Betelgeuse’s ex-wife Dolores, Willem Dafoe as Wolf Jackson, a former B-Movie star who has become a ghost detective in the afterlife and Justin Theroux as Rory, Lydia’s husband and TV producer.
(h/t Hollywood Reporter)
