A comedy about death is a serious matter, especially when children are included in the target audience.

Tim Burton has become an expert in achieving that with both animated and live-action films: The Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride, Ed Wood, and Beetlejuice.

Of those, only Beetlejuice has been adapted into a Broadway musical. A recently deceased couple teams up with a mischievous spirit to scare away the new inhabitants of their house: a family that has just lost its matriarch. That’s the story of the movie that earned more than $8 million in its opening weekend in late March 1988 – a date far removed from Halloween, which would have been its natural season.

“About as funny as a shrunken head – and it happens to include a few,” Janet Maslin wrote then in her negative review in The New York Times. Her colleague Vincent Canby was more enthusiastic, and called it “a farce for our time”.

Beetlejuice eventually grossed $73.7 million in North America, way over its $15 million budget, making it the 7^th highest grossing film of 1988 according to The Los Angeles Times, which called it a “sleeper.”

The film starred Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin and Catherine O’Hara, all of them go on to be Golden Globes winners. Beetlejuice also took home the only Oscar for which it was nominated, Best Makeup.

For more than three decades, this black comedy has been one of Hollywood’s most famous ghosts. Literally. Many times the idea of Beetlejuice 2 has made headlines, from 1990 when it was first proposed, to April 2019, when Warner Bros. stated the sequel had been shelved again. In exactly the same month, the musical adaptation of the original Beetlejuice was opening on Broadway.

“Mr. Burton’s original film, which cemented his reputation as a Hollywood moneymaker, divided critics when it first came out … But moviegoers swooned for Mr. Burton’s stylized blend of morbid darkness and cartoon brightness, and it remains a cult favorite. Certainly, no one complained that it was understated. The biggest objection from its fans was that Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice – the scurrilous phantom who wreaks havoc among both the living and the dead in a haunted middle-class home – didn’t get enough screen time,” wrote Ben Brantley for The New York Times when the musical opened.

And now, in 2022, the spirit of Beetlejuice 2 is back haunting Hollywood. Last February, Deadline announced the sequel, this time to be produced by Plan B Entertainment (owned by Brad Pitt) alongside Warner Bros.

Keaton and Ryder would be reprising their roles, more than 34 years after the original, ending one of Hollywood’s longest hiatuses. Last May, rumors spread that Johnny Depp – Burton’s most famous actor – would also join the cast. The shooting was supposed to begin this summer. But since then, there has been no further news, and there have been no statements from Burton.

Although timeless, Beetlejuice could be quite contemporary, as Alex Brightman, the actor who plays the title character on Broadway, has pointed out. “Our show… is reminding people about life. It reminds them to live their life because death is imminent, and I think that’s not a bad thing. It’s just about how you choose to live your life. I think a reminder about that – especially in these times – is very helpful,” he told The New York Theater Guide almost presciently in 2019 when nobody knew that Covid was about to plunge humankind into its darkest time in many decades.

Burton was not directly involved in the musical Beetlejuice, which was created by Eddie Perfect (who wrote the songs) and Scott Brown and Anthony King (who did the book) and received eight Tony nominations.

Two other films by Burton have made it to Broadway: Big Fish (2013) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2017). Both had a short run, and certainly, neither of their plots has the tragicomic, theatrical and bizarre mood of Beetlejuice.

Many of Burton’s fans insist that almost all of his films have the perfect potential to be Broadway musicals: The Nightmare Before Christmas, Ed Wood, Edward Scissorhands – although that one did have a contemporary dance adaptation, without words – Big Eyes, Frankenweenie, James And The Giant Peach, Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure and Corpse Bride.

It has also happened the other way around: in 2007 Burton released the film version of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, adapting the 1979 musical written by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler. The film received four Golden Globe nominations – including one for Burton for Best Director and for Helena Bonham Carter for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy – and won two: Best Motion Picture, Comedy or Musical; and Johnny Depp for Best Actor in that genre.

With or without Beetlejuice 2, Burton remains a much-respected movie maker, with the above nomination for a Golden Globe, two for Oscars, and another for the Palme d’Or at Cannes (Ed Wood).