For decades now, people have talked about making a sequel to BeetlejuiceThe 1988 horror comedy became a surprise hit for director Tim Burton, and helped elevate Michael Keaton into the upper echelon of ’80s comic leading men. Back in 2013, there were reports that Burton would return for Beetlejuice 2, directing Keaton once again in the role of the anarchic ghost Betelgeuse.

In 2015, it was supposedly likely that Beetlejuice 2 would shoot some time later that year. (It did not.) Beetlejuice co-star Winona Ryder said that the movie was really happening around that same time. (It was not.) By 2016, things had taken a turn for the worse, when Keaton claimed the Beetlejuice 2 ship had sailed. Then in 2017, a new writer was brought on board to work on a new script for the project.

That’s the last Beetlejuice 2 article in the ScreenCrush archives. Five years later, we’ve finally got another update, with word coming that Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B, is now developing the sequel for Warner Bros. According to Deadline, “the sequel remains in early development, with the script yet to be written. No other attachments have been disclosed at this time.”

Keaton is already mining the nostalgia for the glory days of his career by playing Batman in the upcoming Flash and Batgirl movies, so it seems very plausible he could still be convinced to return for the right price and the right script to another Beetlejuice. Burton’s busy too — he’s currently working on an Addams Family series for Netflix titled Wednesday — but it’s hard to imagine a Beetlejuice movie without him and his off-kilter visual aesthetic. Given how many false starts this project has had through the years, it doesn’t seem like a good idea to get our hopes too high over it. But the idea of a new Tim Burton/Michael Keaton movie does sound pretty incredible.

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