It's Showtime! 39 'Beetlejuice' Facts About the Ghost With the Most
These Beetlejuice facts may just make your millennium.
The 35-year-old Tim Burton classic still holds up: Michael Keaton gave one of the most fun onscreen performances ever as the Ghost With the Most, and the film was one of Winona Ryder's biggest breakouts. With star turns from Geena Davis, Alec Baldwin and Catherine O'Hara (plus even an appearance from Dick Cavett!), the dark goth fairytale deals with life, death and the gray (and pastel!) areas in between, complete with creepiness, Calypso dance parties, teenage angst and gross-out humor.
Find out all the behind-the-scenes Beetlejuice scoop you never knew while you brace yourself for the upcoming sequel.
Related: The Best Beetlejuice Quotes
Beetlejuice Facts
1. Tim Burton didn't "get" Beetlejuice at first.
In her memoir Dying of Politeness, Geena Davis recalled that director Tim Burton told her he didn't quite understand Beetlejuice at all.
Davis was cast as Barbara Maitland after she met with Burton and told him, "I just want you to know, I get this movie, I really get it." She writes, "Later, he would tell me that one of the reasons he cast me was because he wasn't sure he really got the movie, so it might be handy to have someone around who was very sure they knew what it was about."
Related: What Tim Burton Is Really Like Behind the Scenes
2. Geena Davis wasn't Tim Burton's first choice to play Barbara in Beetlejuice.
Burton's original vision for Barbara Maitland wasn't future Oscar winner Davis, but actually Kirstie Alley. Alley reportedly couldn't do the movie because she couldn't get out of Cheers to make filming work.
Related: Kirstie Alley's Most Memorable Performances
3. Beetlejuice was the first movie set Geena Davis's parents visited—and they ended up in the film.
Davis's parents lived in Vermont and visited the Beetlejuice set in New Hampshire, making it the first time they ever came to see her work on a movie.
Davis wrote in Dying of Politeness that her mom brought homemade baked goods to the set for Davis to distribute and that an assistant director used Davis's parents as extras in several scenes to keep them busy. Her father asked to be credited as "Will Davis" instead of his name, Bill Davis, which he explained simply: "That's my stage name."
Warner Bros.
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4. Tim Burton gave Geena Davis a very simple direction for the Beetlejuice waiting room scene.
When Davis's character Barbara is in a waiting room for the afterlife and seated next to a large man with a shrunken head, Burton's direction was simple (and all too relatable to New Yorkers): She recalls in Dying of Politeness that he told her, "Just pretend it's somebody a little bit weird who has chosen to sit next to you on the subway. You know, it's not really that big a deal, but also, 'What are you looking at?'"
5. Alec Baldwin thought Beetlejuice might be a career-killer.
While Davis "got" Beetlejuice, her co-star Alec Baldwin didn't at the time—and he admitted he thought the movie might be a nail in his career coffin at the time.
"When we did Beetlejuice, I had no idea what it was about. I thought my, all of our, careers are going to end with the release of this film," Baldwin told GQ. "Maybe we're all going to be dead."
6. Tim Burton only had one memorable note for Alec Baldwin on Beetlejuice.
Baldwin says that Burton's main direction for his character of Adam Maitland was to make him "more posh," using actor Robert Cummings as an example.
7. Tim Burton was a big doodler on set.
According to Baldwin, Burton spent a lot of time sketching and doodling during filming.
"He would sit at a desk and draw the characters, and he would never look up at me," Baldwin told GQ. "Tim was looking down at a piece of paper and maybe this is the only direction Tim gave me the whole entire movie: He would look up and go, 'No. Don't do that.' And then go back to the paper and draw. But, when you're around Tim, he was just such a crazy professor. That's one of the earliest movies I made, and you see everything that's brought to bear in making movies in a movie like that."
8. Michael Keaton ad-libbed a lot of his famous Beetlejuice moments.
Baldwin told GQ that when it came to working with Burton, "Michael came and knew the secret. Because I would act and then I would have some doubts. I was much more neurotic about what I would do, and I was very young starting out in films. And Keaton just came out and he was like the comedy Annie Oakley. He was so self-assured. He just tore it up."
Related: Michael Keaton's Best Characters
9. One of Michael Keaton's ad-libbed lines in Beetlejuice made Alec Baldwin laugh so hard he almost choked.
When Keaton, as Beetlejuice, spits into the inside of his jacket and says, "Save that guy for later," it pretty much broke Baldwin's brain. The 30 Rock star told GQ, "I thought I was going to choke, I was laughing so hard off camera."
10. The original Beetlejuice script was very different.
The original screenplay for Beetlejuice from Michael McDowell was starkly different from what the world fell in love with onscreen. In his version, there was a lot more gore shown in the Maitlands' fatal accident; and Beetlejuice was a winged demon who wanted to murder the Deetz family, not just kill them. He also wanted to defile Lydia, not marry her. (He also mutilated a second child, a "normal" and less goth daughter, that the family had in his version.)
In McDowell's original version, there were also some racist elements: Beetlejuice is described as "small and wiry, dark, with vaguely Middle-Eastern features."
Obviously, the gory aspect of the car crash, the second daughter and the racially charged depiction of the Ghost with the Most were scrapped.
11. The original Beetlejuice ending was also quite different.
McDowell's script ends with an exorcism that destroys Beetlejuice—but has some side effects as well. The house shrinks down to the size of Adam's tiny model town. The Maitlands and Lydia stay in the model house, which Adam and Barbara decorate to look like their prior home, while the rest of the Deetz family moves out of state.
12. Another proposed Beetlejuice ending was really dark.
In an alternate Beetlejuice ending that was considered, Lydia stayed with the Maitlands ... because she became a ghost. Yes, that has the scary implications you're thinking about right now.
Producer Larry Wilson told Yahoo!, "Our first ending was Lydia—she died in a fire and was able to join Barbara and Adam in the afterlife. A couple of people said to us, ‘Do you really think that’s a good idea? Is that really the message you want to be sending to the teenagers of the world? Die in a fire?’ So, yeah, it probably was darker."
13. Michael Keaton wasn't Tim Burton's first choice to play Beetlejuice.
Though it's basically impossible to picture anyone else in the part, Keaton wasn't the first actor Burton envisioned as Beetlejuice. He actually had his eyes on Rat Pack icon Sammy Davis Jr., who was 63 years old at the time. Comedian Sam Kinison and Dudley Moore were reportedly also considered.
It was producer David Geffen who chose Keaton and quickly convinced Burton he was the man for the job.
Related: Michael Keaton on Tackling Opioid Crisis in Dopesick
14. Michael Keaton turned down Beetlejuice more than once.
In a 2014 interview, Keaton revealed that he turned down playing the titular ghoul twice because he just didn't grasp what Burton's vision was for the character.
"I didn't understand what he was talking about. I had no idea what he was talking about. But I liked him," Keaton recalled. "I went, 'Oh, well, this guy's something.' And so I said, 'I wish I could do it, you seem like a really nice guy, I know you're creative, but I don't get it.'"
Keaton took a second meeting, and he still didn't get it and turned Burton down again. After a third meeting, Keaton said Burton gave him details and ideas that he "just logged" into his memory and mulled over. Their shared vision eventually made the iconic character we know and love today.
15. Michael Keaton came up with much of Beetlejuice's aesthetic himself.
Part of what convinced Keaton to star as Beetlejuice was that his ideas for the character's look meshed so well with Burton's.
Keaton met with some people he knew in the wardrobe department and requested different clothes from different periods.
In terms of Beetlejuice's style, he had an idea for his walk and his teeth, as well as his iconic 'do, which he described to the costume and makeup staff as, "I want hair that looks like I stuck my phone in an electrical outlet." He also requested makeup to look like mold because he said Burton told him Beetlejuice lived under rocks.
He showed up to the stage without discussing his costume ideas with Burton beforehand, worried that he'd be "way off the mark."
"He got it immediately," Keaton recalled, adding that it wasn't outside the realm of what Burton had conceived. "[Burton] said, 'Yes, that and, let's do more, let's do more.'"
16. Beetlejuice is only in Beetlejuice for a short time.
While obviously the title character isn't exactly in a "blink and you'll miss him" role in the movie, Beetlejuice doesn't actually appear until about 45 minutes into the film—and Beetlejuice only has about 18 minutes of screentime in Beetlejuice as a whole.
17. Beetlejuice's makeup was originally too creepy.
Oscar-winning makeup artist Ve Neill said that when she first copied some of Burton's sketches onto Keaton, the result was actually too scary and not silly enough. They made some changes: Pale yellow makeup bordering on white for his skin, pale green hair dye for the wig, purple and brown makeup for his giant under-eye circles and one very specific tool for the mold that Keaton had requested.
Warner Bros.
“I sent a PA off to the hobby store and I said, 'Get me some crushed green foam like they use on model kits, for moss and stuff like that,'" Neill recalled to Yahoo!. "I said, 'We'll put some moss in his hair. We'll just make it look like he crawled out from underneath a rock.' So I got this crushed green foam, and I painted up the areas where I wanted it to come out. I wanted it to look like it was creeping out from underneath his hairline and his neck and stuff. I just stuck in on wherever the glue was."
18. The Beetlejuice makeup team spent less time with Michael Keaton than they did with the rest of the cast.
For as extensive as Keaton's makeup was for Beetlejuice, he actually spent the least amount of time in the makeup trailer compared to the rest of the cast, Neill told Yahoo!.
“You have to remember: Michael Keaton only worked like two and a half weeks on that movie," she explained. "Because he was never with the living, except for that one scene at the end."
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19. Beetlejuice's broken nose was made with prosthetics for a different body part.
When Keaton wanted his character to have a broken nose, the makeup team didn't have any prosthetic noses to work with, so they improvised—and it shows just what geniuses they are, because no one was the wiser.
Neill says she and fellow makeup artist Steve LePore actually used prosthetic lips on each side of Keaton's nose to give it the smushed appearance you see in the film.
20. Tim Burton had a rule for how the undead in Beetlejuice should look.
If you've always wondered why the rest of the undead citizens in Beetlejuice, aside from the Maitlands, are candy-colored, it's because that's specifically what Burton wanted. Neill said that he asked that the undead characters to be made up with colors "like Necco wafers." Yum!
Warner Bros.
21. The character of Beetlejuice is based on a classic star.
Larry Wilson, one of the co-writers for Beetlejuice, said before he, Burton and Keaton nailed down who they wanted the character to be specifically, he had an idea in mind for inspiration.
“The first thing I remember writing about the character or saying to [Keaton] about the character was, 'He's Groucho Marx from Hell.' Groucho Marx was the fastest, wittiest, most sardonic absurdist person in the room, always," Wilson told Yahoo!. "But it doesn’t make a difference because Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice.”
22. Beetlejuice almost had two really different titles.
Some of Burton's most famous movies are named after their main characters—think Ed Wood and Edward Scissorhands—but execs didn't want to name Beetlejuice after Keaton's character.
They floated the idea of House Ghosts, which didn't fare well with Burton. He jokingly suggested Scared Sheetless, and studio heads actually liked that—until Burton says that he "threatened to jump out [of] a window."
23. Anjelica Huston almost played Delia Deetz.
Anjelica Huston, who famously made the Grand High Witch and Morticia Addams an aesthetic goal for goths and normies alike, almost played Delia Deetz. She had to withdraw from Beetlejuice for health reasons, which opened the door for Catherine O'Hara to play the struggling sculptor and matriarch.
Related: Will There Be a Schitt's Creek Movie?
24. Lydia Deetz was down to Winona Ryder and a '90s star.
Can you picture anyone from Who's the Boss? in Beetlejuice? Because Alyssa Milano almost played Lydia instead of Winona Ryder.
"It was between the two of us, and she actually got the part," Milano told HuffPost Live in 2016. "You always wonder what would have happened differently in my life had that worked out, not that I would want it to be any different, but it's just an interesting thought game."
Related: 13 Facts You Never Knew About Winona Ryder
25. Several other major stars were considered for Lydia.
Actresses who were also considered for Lydia included Justine Bateman, Jennifer Connelly, Diane Lane, Heather Langenkamp, Juliette Lewis, Lori Loughlin, Sarah Jessica Parker, Brat Pack queen Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy and Brooke Shields. Ryder reportedly got the part after Burton was impressed with her performance in the film Lucas.
Warner Bros.
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26. Tim Burton played matchmaker for Catherine O'Hara and her now-husband on the set of Beetlejuice.
O'Hara owes Burton big time! She told Digital Spy, "I met my husband [Bo Welch] on Beetlejuice. He designed the sets and he's a production designer, and Tim actually set us up to date!"
Related: Facts You Never Knew About Schitt's Creek
27. Dick Cavett had a genius idea for filming the Beetlejuice dinner party scene.
Dick Cavett revealed in an interview with Yahoo! that Burton had trouble filming the final shots of the famous dinner party scene, in which the shrimp cocktail turns into hands that grab the guests' and hosts' faces into their bowls.
Cavett recalled that the special effects teams were set up under the table and couldn't see the actors, so they'd often miss their faces when they tried to grab at them. Cavett suggested they film that part in reverse, so Burton listened: He filmed some takes of the hands grabbing the stars' faces, then lowering back down into the table.
While Cavett isn't sure if those specific takes made it into the final cut of the movie, he says he was "hailed as a genius" for the suggestion—even though he is sure someone else would have suggested it if he didn't.
28. Dick Cavett wishes one specific thing would have made it into Beetlejuice that never did.
Cavett, who's also a magician, told Yahoo! that he wished he'd been able to do some tricks with his dinner napkin in the scene to make it appear possessed. It's his only very minor regret about the movie, the filming of which he says was "delightful and every day was interesting."
Related: Dick Cavett Tells All
29. Two R&B classics were almost used instead of Harry Belafonte's hits in Beetlejuice.
The famous dinner party scene, in which Beetlejuice possesses Delia and her guests to mime and dance along to "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" by Harry Belafonte, was almost very different. Early versions of the script called for the song to be "If I Didn't Care" by The Inkspots. You can listen below to get an idea of just how different that vibe would have been.
Elsewhere, Lydia would mouth the lyrics to "When a Man Loves a Woman" (most famously sung by Percy Sledge) instead of the upbeat "Jump in the Line."
O'Hara reportedly suggested using Calypso music instead, and co-star Jeffrey Jones told Pitchfork he suggested "Day-O" specifically, and that it was ultimately chosen likely because it wasn't expensive to license the song.
"It's a nice tune, for one," Cavett said of "Day-O." "Almost everybody knew it. The absurdity of our singing calypso and being ordered to by strange creatures—it made a nice comic combination. Better than if we were singing ‘Silent Night.’"
Related: How Harry Belafonte Sang His Own Tune
30. Harry Belafonte saw a career resurgence after Beetlejuice.
Belafonte told Pitchfork that Beetlejuice introduced his music to younger generations and changed his life.
"Everywhere I went, for about a year, I had kids all over me: 'Oh! The guy from Beetlejuice!' Wiping their hands full of tomato ketchup and mustard on my clothes," he said. "I never worked for such a young audience. And I enjoyed the whole excursion."
Related: Harry Belafonte's Best Songs
31. "Day-O" played at a Beetlejuice star's memorial.
Otho is one of the more memorable minor players in Beetlejuice, especially from the dinner party scene. Glenn Shadix played the pretentious interior designer, and "Day-O" played at a memorial service following his untimely death in 2010.
32. A Jack Skellington prototype can be seen in Beetlejuice.
Eagle-eyed fans of Burton's work discovered, upon rewatching Beetlejuice, that a dead ringer (ahem) for The Nightmare Before Christmas protagonist Jack Skellington is visible in the scene where Beetlejuice yells, "Attention, K-Mart shoppers!" Watch it below.
Burton wouldn't release The Nightmare Before Christmas for more than four years after Beetlejuice hit theaters.
Related: 50 Nightmare Before Christmas Quotes
33. One of the Beetlejuice closing scenes was filmed before Michael Keaton was cast.
The snake scene in Beetlejuice was shot before Keaton was cast in the title role, and as a result, the serpent initially looked a lot different. New shots with a Keaton-esque face on the snake were filmed at the suggestion of studio execs, who reportedly worried that audiences wouldn't realize the monster was an extension of the famous bio-exorcist.
34. Beetlejuice is named after a star.
While his name sounds like a gross beverage made from insects, Beetlejuice is named after the star Betelgeuse, which is is in the Orion constellation. The name is derived from Arabic for "the hand of," meaning "the hand of Orion," though it's not a direct translation.
35. A Beetlejuice animated series spun off from the movie.
A Beetlejuice animated series premiered in 1989 and lasted four seasons. The cartoon, obviously targeted to kids, was much less dark than the live-action movie, and the humor was less suggestive. The series featured Beetlejuice often pulling pranks on and scamming his fellow undead, and occasionally some living people (often Lydia Deetz's parents). No one from the cast of the movie voiced any of their characters in the cartoon, and the Maitlands don't exist in this iteration.
36. Beetlejuice appears in Community.
Community fans noticed! Within the duration of the beloved sitcom, "Beetlejuice" was uttered three times over the course of as many seasons. The third time his name is mentioned is in a Halloween episode, and you can see an extra as Beetlejuice pass by in the background.
Related: Joel McHale Teases Community Movie
37. Beetlejuice almost got a sequel early on.
A truly bizarre-sounding Beetlejuice sequel almost happened decades ago. Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian saw the Deetz family move to Hawaii to open a resort, but the property ends up being on an ancient burial ground. Beetlejuice shows up and chaos ensues ... and he also enters a surfing contest. Seriously.
The movie didn't get made because Warner Bros., Burton and Keaton were more focused on Batman Returns. Thank goodness.
Related: How to Watch Every Batman Movie In Order
38. A Beetlejuice sequel is finally, officially coming.
It's showtime! Beetlejuice 2 is finally on the way. The movie is slated to film in London later in 2023, with a release date set for Sept. 6, 2024. Seth Grahame-Smith, author of Pride & Prejudice & Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter wrote the screenplay only on the condition that Keaton would return to reprise his role. Ryder is also set to come back—and so is director Burton.
39. Geena Davis may not return for Beetlejuice 2.
Davis expressed interest in a potential return as well, but did say she'd understand if she couldn't.
"I want to play every character I've ever played again," she told People, adding of her character Barbara, "I have a feeling that ghosts don't age. How would they explain that they're older?"
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