UPDATE: I shot Grahame-Smith a quick e-mail and he clarified what Deadline wrote: “It’s a sequel, not a remake.” So there you go.
Here’s some news that falls squarely within the realm of “holy crap.” Tim Burton’s 1988 comedy (horror-comedy seems inaccurate, no?) classic Beetlejuice is coming back to big screens with a sequel.
Deadline reports that David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith of KatzSmith Productions (Grahame-Smith also wrote the book and film script for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) have just signed a two-year first look deal with Warner Bros., and that the duo’s first project is expected to be the new Beetlejuice. Deadline’s phrasing is a bit odd here, calling the movie “a reboot [that advances] the storyline of the original.” Don’t reboot literally start from the beginning? That description sounds much more like a sequel.
The presumption is that the “reboot” angle means there’s going to be a new cast, no surprise for a two-decade-plus old movie that featured young talents like Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Winona Ryder and, of course, star Michael Keaton. It would be nice to see some originals return as well — don’t be surprised if some of them do (c’mon Keaton!) — but with a creative mind like Grahame-Smith overseeing what sounds an awful lot like a proper sequel, this sounds like something you might want to raise your hopes for.
