BEETLEJUICE 2 Won't Happen Without Michael Keaton!
Writers say they have Tim Burton's blessing for the 'true' 26 years later continuation sequel and they wouldn't be pursuing it if they weren't absolutely sure 60 year old Michael Keaton would reprise the title role!
Well over two decades since he starred in the original Michael Keaton, who turned 60 last month, is being sought after to once again play the pale faced ghoul for hire Beetlejuice in a new movie that was setup recently at Warner Bros. Writer/producer pair David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith, the latter who has wrote the forthcoming Tim Burton produced Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and the forthcoming Tim Burton directed Dark Shadows, have spoke to EW and claim they won Tim Burton's blessing to make the sequel and they wouldn't want to be moving forward with the project if they didn't think they could secure Michael Keaton for the title role! "When Warner Bros. came to us about it, we said the only way we'd do it if we got Tim blessing and involvement, and we got that," says Grahame-Smith, "and the star of the movie has to be Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice, and it's a true continuation 26 years later. Not just throwing him in as a cameo going, 'Hey, it's me. I endorse this movie.' We're not there yet, because we don't have a film to present to him."Did you read that? The star of the movie 'has to be Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice' and that this a true 26 years later sequel. WOW. At this point with Grahame-Smith in the Tim Burton game and with Keaton on board, would it be really that surprising if Burton got over his sequels hangover and decided to direct this himself? So there you have it... the gauntlet is well and truly down for Keaton, a once huge name whose star has faded considerably in the past fifteen years so much that I'm not even sure the current generation of film fans could pick him out of a line-up. But he could still do Beetlejuice, even now. You can see he still has that fire in his eyes... and as recently as last summer when asked about it hypothetically said Oh Id do that in a heartbeat. Absolutely, thats the one thing Id love to do again. Thats the only one Id love to do. No story has made me happier in a long while than this one. Watch this space and read my article last month about Beetlejuice Goes To Hawaii...