There’s been an increased interest in seeing another Beetlejuice movie in the past few years, but it’s kind of tough to say what it would be like and who might return from the original cast. As anyone whose seen the movie remembers, the star character was sent back to the land of the dead via ingestion by a sandworm and about to spend a very long time in the waiting room. In the last scene we were given of the titular character, he was having his head shrunk by a witch doctor as punishment for swapping numbers. In other words, it was a fitting end to a comical horror that was initially meant to be much scarier and a lot more horrific than it ended up being. There’s quite a bit about Beetlejuice that was supposed to be different from the start, since Tim Burton wanted to put Sammy Davis Jr. in the lead role, and nearly every cast member in the movie had to beat out another actor to gain their role. At one time it sounds as though Beetlejuice might have been far different than the movie we did end up getting.
But where in the world did he come from? With a lot of fans so focused on the continuation of the original movie, not a lot of people are thinking about where the character came from or what it might be like to see him as he was before meeting the Maitland’s. That idea feels like it might be kind of interesting since it could go a long way to explaining why he is the way he is in the original movie. Getting Michael Keaton and everyone back to take on their roles again might not be as possible as it was when the idea for the sequel was brought up, but it’s not hard to think that a suitable actor could be found. The Deetz’s wouldn’t even be a part of the story, so perhaps a younger Juno would be important as well since she and Beetlejuice were partners at one point in time.
That might be worth a movie, or at least a limited streaming series if Tim Burton found that he was willing to revisit his creation in such a manner. Whether it would be appealing to enough people is the question since interest in Beetlejuice has kind of waxed and waned over the years in regards to the sequel. Thinking of a story that might be suitable to a younger version of the character wouldn’t be too tough since it feels as though he was born to be the type of individual that’s crude, lewd, and ready to do anything that might be to his benefit, even if it means cheating and lying to reach his goals. Of course, it might be intriguing to see if there was a bit of good to him before he became the undead slob that so many remember. Thinking that he might have been a decent person initially is kind of tough thanks to the great job that Michael Keaton did with the role that he nearly passed on.
Trying to imagine Sammy Davis Jr. playing this character is a bit tough simply because as entertaining as Davis Jr. was, he didn’t feel like the right type for this role, and might have tanked the bit in short order. Somehow though, after three meetings with Tim Burton, Keaton managed to come up with a way to play the character that made sense to him and brought to life a movie that is still remembered fondly by a lot of fans to this day. Thinking that this might have been a very different production with a different title is kind of funny, but then the process of making a movie is usually something that many people don’t know much about since the end product is all that many folks focus on. Still, wondering about the origin of Beetlejuice is fun since it means that there’s something that could have happened to this character far back in his past that would have sent him down a dark path that would eventually turn him into a hilarious but deadly individual, or there was something much worse that spawned Beetlejuice, something even darker that made him the way he was. It’s fair to think that no one is going to worry about his origin story that much since some things don’t warrant a lot of the thought that people give them. But it would still be a decent idea to give a better idea of where he came from and how he managed to find himself buried in the Maitland’s model cemetery since it probably is a good story. But unless someone has enough ambition to bring a proposal to Mr. Burton, it probably won’t happen.
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