Tim Burton Explains Why Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis Aren't in the “Beetlejuice ”Sequel (Exclusive)
"I didn't want to just tick any boxes," the 'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice' director says
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Tim Burton (left) and Geena Davis and Alec Baldwin in 'Beetlejuice.'You can try saying their names three times, but Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis won’t appear in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the sequel to the 1988 horror comedy directed by Tim Burton.
In the original movie, Baldwin, now 66, and Davis, now 68, played Adam and Barbara Maitland, Connecticut residents who become ghosts when they accidentally drive off a bridge while swerving to avoid hitting a dog.
Their spirits are confined to the charming house where they lived, which is bought by the eccentric Deetz family: Charles (Jeffrey Jones) his daughter Lydia (Winona Ryder) and Charles’s wife Delia (Catherine O’Hara).
Unwilling to share the house with the Deetzes, the Maitlands turn to the lewd and crude demon Beetlejuice (Michael Keaton) to help scare away the new residents.
While many of the original cast members return for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice — including Keaton, Ryder and O’Hara — Baldwin and Davis are not among them.
Related: Michael Keaton Teases Beetlejuice Sequel: A 'Shrunken Head Room' and 'Enormous Fun' (Exclusive)
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The cast of the original 'Beetlejuice.'The sequel explains how the Maitlands found a “loophole” allowing them to leave the house from which they were confined.
Burton, for his part, wanted to dive into a whole new story that didn’t involve the Maitlands. “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 tells PEOPLE.
He continues that it was necessary for many years to have passed in order to make the movie he wanted, which finds Delia and Lydia, now living elsewhere, returning to the Connecticut home for the funeral of patriarch Charles.
Parisa Taghizadeh/Warner Bros.
Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice in 'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.'Lydia, who was a teen in the original, is now a mother with a teenage daughter of her own, Astrid (played by Wednesday breakout Jenna Ortega). Astrid is just as petulant to Lydia as Lydia once was to her stepmother Delia. For reasons we won’t spoil here, Beetlejuice makes a return, of course.
“A sequel like this, it really had to do with the time,” says Burton. “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.”
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Jenna Ortega and Winona Ryder in 'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.'Keaton previously told PEOPLE he and Burton had conversations through the years about revisiting Beetlejuice, but they needed to nail it.
“We thought, ‘You got to get this right. I was hesitant and cautious, and he was probably equally as hesitant and cautious,” says Keaton. “Once we got there, I said, ‘Okay, let's just go for it.’ ”
In April, Davis confirmed to Entertainment Tonight that she wouldn’t be returning — and offered her own theory why. “I’m not in the remake,” she said. “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!”
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in theaters Sept. 6.
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