It’s fair to say everyone’s pretty excited at the prospect of Beetlejuice 2, making the frequent conflicting reports regarding the status of the project more than a little frustrating.
Last year Tim Burton expressed his keenness to move ahead with the sequel to his celebrated 1988 film, and then in March, word exploded all over the internet that shooting was all but ready to commence. Just a couple of days after those reports though, they were stamped as nonsense, and Beetlejuice 2 suddenly looked unlikely to emerge anytime soon. Following all this, a ‘hilarious’ online April fool’s jape that Burton planned to replace Michael Keaton with Johnny Depp proved a touch too believable and upset a few keyboard warriors.
In a recent interview with Collider, Burton gave an update on where he is with the film and, well, if you’re looking for any kind of confirmation, you’re gonna be disappointed. And it seems that Johnny Depp gag reached all the way to the top.
“This is the thing,” the director told the site, “it’s something that I’m interested in, but there’s so many stories [online], dumping Michael Keaton for Johnny Depp and this or that, and I’ve talked to these people and they didn’t wanna hear this so they just made up a story. But the fact of it is I have talked to Michael and I have talked to Winona, I’ve talked to a few people. It’s something that I really would like to do in the right circumstances, but it’s one of those films where it has to be right. It’s not a kind of a movie that cries out [for a sequel], it’s not the Beetlejuice trilogy. So it’s something that if the elements are right—because I do love the character and Michael’s amazing as that character, so yeah we’ll see. But there’s nothing concrete yet.”
So that’s where we’re at. Burton still seems up for it, and it’s likely we’ll see it someday yet. I’d advise against holding your breath though.
Words: Kevan Farrow (@KevanX)
