The advantage of having Michael Keaton in the cast of a heavily promoted movie like RoboCop – apart from his formidable talent – is that we get to hear his response to the inevitable journalistic enquiry: What’s happening with Beetlejuice 2?
Speaking to MTV News, Keaton updated the world on what is surely one of the more exciting 80s movies to be potentially revisited:
“I’ve emailed Tim a couple of times, talked to the writer a couple of times, but all really, really preliminary stuff. I always said that’s the one thing I’d like to do again, if I ever did anything again. But it kind of required Tim to be involved some way or another. Now it looks like he is involved. And without giving too much away, we’ve talked to each other, and emailed each other, and if he’s in, it’s going to be hard not to be in.”
Indeed. Beetlejuice 2 without Michael Keaton would be like Batman without gadgets – utterly useless. Beetlejuice 2 with Michael Keaton, Tim Burton and Winona Ryder, on the other hand, is one of the best movie prospects around at the moment.
The one thing that has been repeatedly confirmed by all involved is that there is a script on the way, and it is being written by David Katzenberg (The Hard Times Of RJ Berger) and Seth Grahame-Smith (Dark Shadows, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter). When that script will finally find its way onscreen is another matter, however.
Michael Keaton has a busy upcoming slate, including the Aaron Paul vehicle Need For Speed – arriving in March – and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Birdman later in the year. Tim Burton is currently polishing Big Eyes ahead of its August 2014 release, and is also set to direct Jane Goldman’s adaptation of bestselling children’s book, Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children, potentially hitting cinemas in summer 2015.
Could it be that Beetlejuice 2 will emerge from Limbo in 2016? Perhaps we should all say his name three times – just to be sure.