“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” early draft featured Maitlands cameo — here's why it was cut (exclusive)
Alfred Gough explains how he and fellow scribe Miles Millar toyed with including Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis' characters.
Warning: This article contains a mild spoiler from Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
Any longtime Beetlejuice fan who kept tabs on what the actors said over the years can tell you that two of the original stars, Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis, would not return for the sequel. Davis commented multiple times that nobody contacted her to reprise the role of Barbara Maitland, and director Tim Burton even explained why he chose not to bring those particular characters back. However, the screenwriters on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice were prepared for a different scenario.
Burton's Wednesday scribe Alfred Gough, who penned the screenplay for the sequel with another alum of the Netflix show, Miles Millar, tells Entertainment Weekly how an early draft of the script featured a cameo appearance from the Maitlands in the ending. Though, it was ultimately scrapped.
"It's funny with the Maitlands because we asked Tim and we went back and forth," Gough recalls. "There was a version where they just showed up at the end, but the problem is they're ghosts. So they kind of needed to look like they were 35, which was never going to happen. I think Tim felt, and Miles and I agreed, that their story had been told. So how do we move on from that?"
Warner Brothers /courtesy Everett Collection
Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis in 1988's 'Beetlejuice'Related: Jenna Ortega, Winona Ryder on shooting the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Sandworm scene (exclusive)
The first Beetlejuice of 1988, from a screenplay by Michael McDowell and Warren Skaaren, starred Baldwin, now 66, and Davis, now 68, as Adam and Barbara Maitland, a married couple who move into their country home in Winter River, Conn. When they die in a car crash, they find themselves haunting the house as ghosts. Unable to leave, they decide to call upon the demonic "bio-exorcist" Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) to evict the new living residents, the Deetzes: Charles (Jeffrey Jones), Delia (Catherine O'Hara), and Lydia (Winona Ryder).
For the sequel, in theaters this weekend, 36 years after the original's release, Gough says Burton wanted to focus on the characters of Lydia, Delia, and Betelgeuse. "The first movie is really about the Maitlands," Gough explains. "It was really Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis' movie for a good [portion]. They're the protagonists who called Beetlejuice against the Deetz family. So he said he really wanted to focus on them."
"He wasn't interested in doing fan service or being slavish," Gough adds. "So I think he was very much about, how do we tell the next iteration of the story?"
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice picks up with Lydia as a single mother whose husband, Richard (Santiago Carbrera), died years earlier. Having used her talents to see ghosts to become the host of a paranormal reality show called Ghost House, she returns to Winter River with her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) and Delia to mourn the loss of her father. Astrid gets tricked by a local ghost, Jeremy (Arthur Conti), into opening a portal to the Afterlife and trading her life for his, so Lydia is forced to summon Betelgeuse once again to save her family.
Parisa Taghizadeh
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The story explains away the Maitlands' absence in a line of dialogue that states Adam and Barbara found a "loophole" and were finally able to leave the house. "I think we even threw in a joke where [Astrid] goes, 'How convenient!'" Gough says. "We tried to find ways, could we nod to the Maitlands? I think Tim was finally like, 'Let's not do that. We have a reason why they're not there anymore. So let's just move on from that.'"
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Catching up with EW at CinemaCon in April of this year, Davis said she hadn't spoken with Burton about the sequel, but noted, "I can't wait to see it."
"That movie means a lot to me," she said at the time. "I'll tell you something funny, some of the time when somebody recognizes me, they say, "I love your movie." I say, 'What movie is it?' [It's] always Beetlejuice."
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly.
