The bizarre Beetlejuice sequel we nearly got 30 years ago

This week, Michael Keaton returns to one of his most famous roles when he plays the titular "bio-exorcist" in Tim Burton's Beetlejuice Beetlejuice — a title that surely means a threequel has to happen. But he actually came close to a return 30 years ago and it would've seen a very different take on the character and the world: it would've involved a lot of surfing.

In 1990, after Beetlejuice became a hit and earned more than four times its budget at the box office, two potential sequel scripts were commissioned. One of them was Beetlejuice In Love, which followed Betelgeuse as he attempted to woo the grieving fiancée of a man who fell to his death from the Eiffel Tower during his proposal. The other idea was called Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian.

Besides being a heck of a title, this came with a truly strange concept. Screenwriter Jonathan Gems, who worked with Burton on 1996 movie Mars Attacks!, explained to Fangoria in 1997 that Burton wanted to "match the surfing backdrop of a beach movie with some sort of German Expressionism". Point Break meets Nosferatu? Sounds great.

The movie would've followed the Deetz family's attempts to build a resort in Hawaii, only to be tormented by the spirit of a Hawaiian kahuna whose burial ground was on the land. Betelgeuse got involved and won a surfing competition through magical means. It was a wild idea, but Keaton and Winona Ryder were both keen as long as Burton was in the director's chair.

Burton and Keaton then changed course to make Batman Returns, which put Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian on ice for a while. The idea then resurfaced, with Heathers scribe Daniel Waters among those involved in retooling it.

Read more: Winona Ryder slams younger co-stars for 'not being interested in movies' (Cover Media)

Kevin Smith was also approached by Warner Bros, but chose to work on Superman Lives — another notoriously cancelled film — for the studio instead. On his 2002 DVD An Evening with Kevin Smith, the filmmaker joked: "Didn't we say all we needed to say in the first Beetlejuice? Must we go tropical?"

By 1997, Gems had given up hope, releasing a statement in which he explained that Ryder was now too old to play her role and that the film would almost certainly never get made. He was right.

However, that wasn't enough to stop the idea of a Beetlejuice sequel. Burton and Keaton were consistently asked about whether they would return to this world and, in 2011, Seth Grahame-Smith — whose odd career includes Burton's Dark Shadows and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter — was hired to write a whole new sequel script. That was the first iteration of what is now Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

The surfing is now gone, but Burton, Keaton, and Ryder are all involved in a story that focuses on Ryder's character and her bond with her daughter, played by Jenna Ortega. She accidentally releases Betelgeuse, causing exactly the sort of anarchic afterlife chaos that audiences loved in the 1980s.

Read more: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice star Winona Ryder says movie couldn’t have been made without Jenna Ortega (BANG Showbiz)

By all accounts, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a fitting follow-up to the original classic, as well as reuniting the Beetlejuice cast. The sequel currently has an impressive 78% approval rating among critics on Rotten Tomatoes from its first reviews. Betelgeuse is alive again.

In 2016, Burton made an intriguing comment to Collider about the prospect of the sequel he has now ended up making. He said: "It’s something that I really would like to do in the right circumstances, but it’s one of those films where it has to be right. It’s not a kind of a movie that cries out [for a sequel], it’s not the Beetlejuice trilogy."

Given that he's called this movie Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, it seems very likely that a trilogy is something that might just happen. Sequels come at you fast in Hollywood. Maybe next time we'll get to see the surfboard.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in UK cinemas from 6 September.