If you’re a fan of the 1989 OG movie Beetlejuice, you might be wondering where two primary characters are in the sequel. The Maitlands don’t appear in the new sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and the reason is pretty intentional
In Beetlejuice, Adam (Alec Baldwin) and Barbara Maitland (Geena Davis) die after avoiding a dog while driving. The characters are bound to their house for 125 years and a new family—the Deetzes—enters their residence. The Maitlands try to scare away Lydia (Winona Ryder), Charles (Jeffrey Jones), and Delia Deetz (Catherine O’Hara) with normal scary tactics. However, they don’t work and they call on the lewd devil Betelgeuse to help them haunt the family away. Things backfire and the Maitlands and the Deetzes team up to get rid of Beetlejuice after they discover the horrors that happen when he’s summoned. The movie ends with the families living in harmony with all the happy haunts.
The family is mentioned a couple of times in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, however they don’t appear at all. Lydia explains to her daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) that the Maitlands don’t haunt the Deetz residence anymore because they crossed over to the afterlife after finding a loophole. So why aren’t they in the movie at all? Did it have to do with Alec Baldwin’s trial?
Why aren’t the Maitlands in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice?
Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis did not return to play Adam and Barbara Maitland because director Tim Burton already had a vision for the sequel that didn’t involve their characters. “I think the thing was for me I didn’t want to just tick any boxes,” he told People. “So even though they were such an amazing integral part of the first one, I was focusing on something else.”
“A sequel like this, it really had to do with the time,” Burton continued, adding that Lydia, Astrid, and Delia’s relationship was the crux of the film. “That was my hook into it, the three generations of mother, daughter, granddaughter. And that [would] be the nucleus of it. I couldn’t have made this personally back in 1989 or whatever.”
Geena Davis previously addressed rumors that she was returning to the sequel to Entertainment Tonight in April. “No, I’m not. I’m not in the remake,” she told the publication. “Oh, you were expecting that I would be? Yeah, no, you know what? Because my theory is that ghosts don’t age… Not that I have.”
