Will there be a Beetlejuice 3?

The prospect of Beetlejuice 3 would've seemed pretty wild just a decade ago. Tim Burton and Michael Keaton had made positive noises about a follow-up to their 1988 classic, but Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian had died a death and looked like it would never be made. 36 years on, though, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice has arrived on screens — and it's a hit. Let's have a think about that third one again.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice managed a massive global opening weekend of $145.4m (£111m), doubling the entire lifetime gross of the first film. And, let's face it, that title seems tailor-made to welcome a third movie to the franchise. You can't just say his name twice, after all.

It takes more than an opportune title to make a sequel happen, though, so let's examine the evidence and see whether it's likely that we'll see the world's most infamous bio-exorcist return to work. There are spoilers ahead for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

Does Beetlejuice Beetlejuice set up Beetlejuice 3?

The final scenes of Beetlejuice Beetlejuice are both definitive and non-definitive, as you'd expect from a story about a very powerful supernatural being. In the third act of the film, Betelgeuse again attempts to marry Winona Ryder's character, Lydia. This time around, he's thwarted by a combination of his own ex-wife Delores (Monica Bellucci) and Lydia's daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega).

Astrid and Lydia are able to join forces amid the carnage caused by Delores — and an afterlife sandworm — in order to shout Betelgeuse's name three times. That causes him to blow up like a balloon and then pop in grotesque fashion.

Read more: Even after all these fears, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a screaming success (For The Win)

That's not the end of Betelgeuse's involvement in the film, though. In a flash-forward, we see Astrid marry a man, only for her to eventually give birth to a baby version of Betelgeuse. This is, fortunately, revealed to be a nightmare experienced by Lydia. But when she wakes up, she notices that Betelgeuse is in her bed. This is then revealed as yet another bad dream.

Of course, we know that Betelgeuse likely isn't dead. Saying his name three times just transports him back to his afterlife exile. He can almost certainly be summoned again.

What have Tim Burton and Michael Keaton said about Beetlejuice 3?

Burton was pretty emphatic when asked about the prospect of a third Beetlejuice film by The Hollywood Reporter, saying: "Well, if [the same] time frame goes on, I’ll be about 100. So maybe. I doubt it."

That's not the exciting news that fans of the franchise wanted to hear. But with an enormous haul of cash already in Warner Bros' back pocket, they're unlikely to let three decades pass before returning to Beetlejuice. If a third movie does happen, everyone will want to strike while the iron's hot. At 66 years old, Burton's got a fair few films in him yet.

Read more: Tim Burton became 'disillusioned with the movie industry' (BANG Showbiz)

In a further chat with SlashFilm, Burton admitted that even this film was a tough sell for him. "I wasn't really personally interested. If you said it to me, I would run the other direction," he said. "This is one where it was something that caught my thing. Now, would something else hit? I don't know."

Keaton is seemingly up for it, as long as the story is right, telling Fandango: "For a long time, [Burton] and I had said don't touch it. Just leave it alone, let it be its own thing, and it took us such a long time to find something where we thought: 'Yeah, maybe this one'. But I always thought the second one should've been called Beetlejuice Beetlejuice; it just made sense."

So the door is very much open for a third Beetlejuice film, as long as all of the key players are happy with whatever the story ends up being. Without either Burton, Keaton, or Ryder — and Ortega is now arguably a part of that mix — it simply wouldn't be the same.