Tim Burton explained the absence of Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis from his Beetle Juice followed this week.
Although Burton brought back original stars Winona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara and Michael Keaton for Beetle Juice Beetle Juicethe sequel to the 1988 classic, due out in 2024, Baldwin and Davis will not be returning.
“I think the thing for me was I didn't want to just check boxes,” Burton said. People“So even though they were such a wonderful integral part of the first one, I was focusing on something else.”
In the original film, Baldwin and Davis played Adam and Barbara Maitland, a recently deceased couple confined to the Connecticut home where they lived when they clashed with the house's new occupants, the Deetz family: Charles (Jeffrey Jones), his daughter Lydia (Ryder), and Charles's wife, Delia (O'Hara).
In Beetle Juice Beetle Juice — which wowed audiences during its premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday — Jenna Ortega plays Lydia’s teenage daughter who accidentally reopens the door to the afterlife.
“A sequel like this, it really had to do with time,” Burton continued. “That was my hook, the three generations of mother, daughter, granddaughter. And that [would] be the nucleus of everything. I couldn't have done that personally in 1989 or so.”
Davis previously said Show tonight in April her theory was that she wouldn't return because “ghosts don't age.”
Beetle Juice Beetle Juice will be released in theaters on September 6th.