How many of these 20 "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" facts do you know?

Don’t worry, we’ll get to “Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian.” However, when producers fast tracked a “Beetlejuice” sequel, two screenplays were commissioned. One was “Beetlejuice in Love,” written by Warren Skaaren who had done a pass on the script for the first movie. Alas, soon after the first draft was turned in, Skaaren passed away, and that was the end of “Beetlejuice in Love.”

It seems like a joke, and maybe you thought it was just some fact tidbit of movie trivia circulating on the internet. It was no joke, though. “Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian” was a fully written screenplay that featured the Deetzes moving to Hawaii and Beetlejuice winning a surfing contest. Not only was it written, but Winona Ryder and Michael Keaton agreed to do it if Tim Burton directed, but then Keaton and Burton got busy on “Batman Returns.”

In 1993, after “Batman Returns” had been handled, producer David Geffen hired Pamela Norris to do a rewrite of “Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian.” Kevin Smith has said that in 1996 he was approached to do a rewrite, but declined. Finally, in 1997, original screenwriter Jonathan Gems said the project was all but dead, with Winona Ryder’s age and the necessity for recasting being the biggest sticking point. This, indeed, was the end of “Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian.”

Warner Bros. got the itch to finally make that “Beetlejuice” sequel happen in 2011. However, its first step was to hire Seth Grahame-Smith, who had worked with Burton on “Dark Shadows.” Grahame-Smith was to produce and write a script. At the time, neither Burton nor Keaton was officially involved, but Grahame-Smith avowed the project would only go ahead if Keaton was on board and there would be no recasting. Burton and Keaton both expressed interest if they liked the script.

As early as February 2012, Grahame-Smith was talking to Keaton to pick his brain on ideas for the script and for the character. Burton got into the mix as well. He said in 2014 “we” had been working on the script and it was close to finished. By January 2015 Grahame-Smith declared the script finished and that Burton would begin shooting by the end of the year.

Like Keaton, Ryder had talked over the years about wanting to play Lydia once again. In fact, with the project percolating, she had a request when she signed on for a role in “Stranger Things” (and do recall when that show began she was the biggest name in the cast by a comfortable margin). Ryder said she would only accept the role if she would be allowed to take a break from production should the “Beetlejuice” sequel begin filming.

You may have noticed Grahame-Smith said that filming would likely begin later that year in a 2015 interview. You also surely noted that “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” did not hit theaters until 2024. Well, the talk remained just that, talk. Occasionally, there would be dribs and drabs of news. Then, there was big news in April 2019. Namely, that Warner Bros. was putting the “Beetlejuice” sequel on the shelf, perhaps never to return.

It wouldn’t be until February of 2022 that a “Beetlejuice” sequel would be mentioned again, but the project was reborn. However, later that year Burton said he wasn’t involved. That would change, though. He would return to direct but also wanted to go “back to basics” after the idea of the sequel made him think about why he ever wanted to make movies in the first place. He also came up with what would be the crux of the story for “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”

Burton’s biggest cultural impact in years came not with a movie, but a TV show. “Wednesday,” focused on Wednesday Addams of a certainly altogether-ooky family, was a sensation on Netflix. Unsurprisingly, Jenna Ortega ended up in the cast of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” playing Lydia’s daughter Astrid. On top of that, though, the script was completely overhauled by the duo of Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, who actually created “Wednesday.” Ultimately, Grahame-Smith would receive only a “story by” credit.

Though Arthur Conti comes from a showbiz family, prior to playing Jeremy in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” his acting resume consisted of one small role in an episode of “House of the Dragon.” He was able to audition for the “Beetlejuice” sequel with Burton over Zoom, though, and got the big news that he had been cast. The only snag? Conti received the news on April Fool’s Day, and thus at first assumed he was being pranked.

For the small, elevated-cameo role of the janitor in the afterlife that is mostly there to be the first one done in by Delores, no actor was in mind for the role. Thus, Burton figured, “Okay, I’ll just ask Danny DeVito then.” In addition to being a very game actor, DeVito had been in multiple Burton movies, so the two knew each other quite well.

From a storytelling perspective, having Charles Deetz die made all the sense in the world, but it was also necessary for Charles to be dealt with without having actor Jeffrey Jones involved for…reasons. Crime reasons, if you’re curious. Special effects were used as a workaround, and Charles’ death was depicted with stop-motion animation. That’s Burton-esque enough as is, but Charles’ death (being in a plane crash and then being eaten by a shark) was inspired by an actual nightmare Burton had about his own death.

Of course, the center of “Beetlejuice” is the Maitlands, played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis. Before the movie came out, Davis said that she would not be returning, for a reasonable logistical issue. The Maitlands, as ghosts, wouldn’t age, and Davis and Baldwin had been aging for decades. Burton and the screenwriters did consider a cameo for the Maitlands, but decided using de-aging technology wouldn’t suffice, so they nixed it.

Unsurprisingly, Danny Elfman returned to score “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” after scoring the original (and a bunch of Burton movies, of course). Elfman wasn’t the only one, though. Costume designer Colleen Atwood, a four-time Oscar winner, had worked with Burton in the past and worked on this film. Notably, though, she did not work on the first “Beetlejuice.”

It was decided to give Beetlejuice a backstory in this film, one that tied him into the quasi-antagonist Delores. Burton then decided to pay tribute to Mario Bava, an Italian director known as the “Master of Italian Horror.” The section was not just shot in black-and-white in a style akin to Bava, but also in Italian. It also helped that Monica Bellucci, who plays Delores, is Italian, and thus could do her own Italian dialog.

The Deetzes return to the fictional Winter River, Connecticut for Charles’ funeral (and thus most of the action in the movie). In the original movie, the town of East Corinth, Vermont serves as the stand-in for Winter River and exteriors and outdoor scenes were shot there. All these years later, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” returned to East Corinth to shoot the exterior scenes for Winter River once again.

The “Beetlejuice” generation and the “Wednesday” generation joined forces to make this movie a hit. Domestically, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” made $111 domestically over its opening weekend. However, September is typically kind of a dead month for movies. To that end, that marks the second-biggest opening weekend for any September debut. It was also the second-biggest opening weekend of Burton’s career.

Made for a budget of $100 million, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” was off to a roaring start financially, and it would prove a big hit for Warner Bros. Although, international audiences maybe don’t have the same affinity for Keaton and Ortega. The movie made $294.1 million in the U.S. and Canada, and $157 million elsewhere for a total of $451.1 million. It was the sixth-highest-grossing movie of 2024 in terms of domestic box office, but did not finish in the top 10 worldwide.

Astrid dresses as Marie Curie for Halloween and in the dialog refers to her as a “French scientist.” Her husband, fellow scientist Pierre Curie, was French, and Marie became a French citizen. That being said, she was born Maria Sklodowska in Poland and she called the first element she discovered “polonium” for a reason. This, evidently, led to a “controversy” in Poland, and a version dubbed into Polish did, indeed, take the time to refer to Curie as Polish and not French.

In the wake of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” proving a success, there was enthusiasm for a third movie, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” perhaps. Some actors expressed interest as well. Then, Burton had to go ahead and throw cold water on the whole thing. Burton said, “Let's do the math... it took 35 years to do this, so I'll be over 100…I don't think so.”