Tales From Development Hell: Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian
- cepmurphywrites
- Jun 17
- 9 min read
By Ryan Fleming.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was released in 2024 to box office success and a mostly positive response. It reunited much of the cast of the original film, no easy feat coming thirty-six years after Beetlejuice (1988). It was not meant to take that long to generate a sequel: one was commissioned almost as soon as Beetlejuice proved successful. There were multiple scripts and ideas, but the one that saw the most development and lasted the longest was the one from Jonathan Gems entitled Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian.
Why wasn’t Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian made? Who was due to return in this sequel? And how would it have fared, especially compared with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice?
Despite being the idea that had the most staying power, and came closest to being filmed before Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian was not the first script completed to serve as a follow-up. Beetlejuice in Love was commissioned in 1990, the same year as Hawaiian, and was written by Warren Skaaren, who had written the screenplay to the original with Michael McDowell, from a story by McDowell and Larry Wilson. What’s interesting about this idea is that it seems Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton) would be the only returning character from the first film.
Beetlejuice in Love would have seen the bio-exorcist making the acquaintance of a recently deceased Leo, who fell from the Eiffel Tower whilst proposing to his girlfriend, Julia. Escaping the afterlife, Betelgeuse would attempt to woo Julia himself with the action split between Paris and the afterlife.
Skaaren died shortly after completed the first draft. It is possible that, had he lived, this might have been the version pursued as a sequel. Skaaren was responsible for many elements that made Beetlejuice as memorable as it was, including turning the humourless winged demon bio-exorcist into a more comedic, rascally, lunatic trickster. He also eliminated the character of the second Deetz child, a more strait-laced sister to the goth Lydia (Winona Ryder).
The Geffen Film Company were keen to fast-track a sequel, which might be why they commissioned two, and had their efforts were focused on Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian, with Jonathan Gems hired by Burton to write the script. The big attraction of this off-kilter concept to Burton was, according to Gems, the idea of combining elements of German Expressionism into a 1950s/60s style US beach party film craze that began with Gidget (1959). Even the title itself is a reference to the sequel Gidget Goes Hawaiian (1961).
Hawaiian would have seen the Deetz family – Lydia, her father Charles (Jeffrey Jones) and stepmother Delia (Catherine O’Hara) – relocated to the fictitious Hawaiian island of Kanooka to develop a resort and casino. Lydia would fall for local surfer Kimo and, becoming disgusted at the greed of the resort builders, ventures into the afterlife to recruit Betelgeuse. We would have followed Betelgeuse in the afterlife at the same time as following Lydia in the world of the living, something that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice retains. This makes Betelgeuse much more of a main character, as opposed to the 17 minutes of screentime he enjoyed in a film that bears his name as the title. Whereas Lydia has matured somewhat since the first film, Betelgeuse is the same as ever.
We find the bio-exorcist down on his luck and working as a janitor in an afterlife supermarket. He is also in a relationship with the deceased Rita, whose affections he does not return and wants their relationship to be purely physical. Again, this is echoed in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice which shows us more of Betelgeuse going about his afterlife and introducing a fraught relationship with a deceased woman. Seeing his opportunity to escape both the afterlife and Rita, Betelgeuse readily accepts Lydia’s request. What follows is the grim, Expressionist afterlife and the gaudy Tiki culture inspired Kanooka colliding. There would be magical surfing contests, dinosaur skeletons running amok, possessed moai, a mermaid date, musical numbers, indigenous spirits, love potions, and even Betelgeuse’s mother showing up.
The film ends with Betelgeuse being hoist by his own petard and drinking the love potion intended for Lydia, which coerces him into finally reciprocating Rita’s feelings. A lot to take in, certainly, but it feels like it does go for mixing those seemingly opposing styles as Burton wanted. That a few of its ideas were later picked up by Beetlejuice Beetlejuice speaks to their solid foundation.
A script was completed, albeit an early draft. Burton was on board with the idea, after all, it seemingly originated with him. Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder had both agreed to do the film, provided Burton returned to direct. What happened? Batman!
To be more specific, Batman Returns (1992) happened. Burton’s Batman (1989), which starred Keaton at the Caped Crusader, was a runaway success and Warner Bros. were keen to have a sequel as soon as possible.
Ironically, Burton had wanted to work on Batman immediately after Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985), the film that brought him success. Warner Bros. were unwilling to take a chance on him directing Batman, and Burton was unwilling to direct Warner’s offer of Hot to Trot (1988), a comedy film with John Candy as the voice of a talking horse. It was only because of this that Burton made Beetlejuice, it was only because of Beetlejuice that Burton could make Batman, it was only because of the success of Batman that a sequel to Beetlejuice was not made in the early 1990s.
The sequel to Batman did have conflicts over the script, with Burton directing Edward Scissorhands (1990) during its development. It is possible that if Batman Returns enters its own period of development hell, Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian might get made instead. In fact, after being impressed with Daniel Waters efforts on the comedy Heathers (1988), Burton originally hired him to script the sequel to Beetlejuice before instead asking him to rewrite Sam Hamm’s script for Batman Returns. A potential source of conflict is producer Jon Peters, who Burton disliked working with on Batman, and was able to have him kicked upstairs as an executive producer and kept him off the set.
Betelgeuse was never far away during this period. Burton had also developed and was an executive producer of the Beetlejuice animated series on ABC. The character featured in Beetlejuice’s Rock and Roll Graveyard Revue alongside the Universal Classic Monsters at the recently opened Universal Studios Florida, where he would appear until the show was retooled in 2002. It was on the streets of that resort that he fought the Ghostbusters in the Streetbusters show from 1991 to 1993. (Despite being from different studios, both Betelgeuse and the Ghostbusters were licensed by Universal for their theme park attractions)
Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian continued to be developed, with Pamela Norris brought on board to rewrite in 1993. Kevin Smith was offered the chance to rewrite the script in 1996 but scoffed at the concept and instead elected to do Superman Lives with Jon Peters. Probably served him right. Original screenwriter Gems confirmed in 1997 that the script was still owned by the production company but was unlikely to ever be made, specifically citing Winona Ryder as being too old by that point, and that to film that version of the script they would have to recast her character. Other ideas were considered over the years too, including ones involving a haunted house or being western themed, but none of these were as developed as Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian. Sequel plans were dormant until Warner Bros. hired Seth Grahame-Smith in 2011 to write and produce a sequel.
It would take another thirteen years, but Beetlejuice Beetlejuice would eventually be released with Keaton and Ryder reprising their roles and Burton directing. As mentioned, some of the story beats from Hawaiian were echoed in the sequel we eventually received so despite being unmade there might still be some of the spirit of the beach party follow up in the nostalgia tinted later effort. Instead of going for something radically different like Paris, Hawaii, or the wild west, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice took audiences back to the familiar locales of the first film with myriad nods to the original work, as was the style at the time. Not to say it does not have its own original ideas: having the emotional core being Lydia now struggling to connect with her own daughter (Jenna Ortega) the way her parents had struggled to connect to her was a great idea and cited by Burton as what drew him to finally make the film.
What if a Beetlejuice sequel had been made in the early 1990s? Would it have been as successful as Beetlejuice Beetlejuice? Or would its conflicting inspirations have proved too much for fans and the audience in general alike?Let’s imagine that development of Batman Returns is a bit more troubled. Perhaps Jon Peters demands Batman fight a giant mechanical spider. Neither is a difficult thing to imagine happening, and perhaps whilst that sequel lingers in development hell Burton instead makes Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian.
Sequels were treated very differently in 1992 as compared to 2024. For one thing, it is difficult to imagine a film made in 1956 receiving a sequel with the same stars and director in 1992, the way it was for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in 2024. For a more pertinent consideration, sequels at the time were still considered by some to be inferior by definition. Examples like The Godfather Part II (1974), Aliens (1986), and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) were seen as aberrations to be excluded from consideration rather than disproving a generalisation. There are examples of film sequels from the late 1980s and early 1990s whose quality might not have been much of a step down from their predecessor but were considered far worse than they actually were just by virtue of being a sequel. Paradoxically, for some of them it was because they hewed too closely to the original film whilst, for others, it was because they strayed too far. And we’ve already covered how Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian is an off-piste idea for a sequel.
The sequel we imagine putting into development hell to get Hawaiian might give us an idea of how it would be received. Warner Bros. were not convinced of Burton’s Gothic take on Batman so he was sort of reined in for the first film. After its success, they wanted Batman Returns to be “more of a Tim Burton movie” according to producer Denise Di Novi. They got what they wanted, and as a result many critics were polarised by the film. If critics were merely polarised, there was a smaller but very vocal group who were outright hostile to the more violent and sexual content of the sequel compared with the original.
Beetlejuice was always more of a Burton film compared with Batman, but even so the introduction of the beach party film theme might similarly polarise audiences. A similar example can be found in Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), which gave a completely different setting, tone, and style compared to the first and was similarly polarising. (The difference was the critics who complained Gremlins (1984) was too dark praised the lighter tone of the sequel.) Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! (1996), also from a Jonathan Gems script, combined 1950s sci-fi B movie elements with darker elements, also received mixed reviews.
This is the era into which Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian would be released, likely to its detriment when it comes to reception. What it would have in its favour is that the mixture of the comedic and the dark were already elements in the first film, which was a success, so audiences may be more willing to accept. At least, they might if it didn’t go Hawaiian – and here Kevin Smith’s dismissal, always a good indicator of what the worst elements of a fandom are thinking, might give us an idea of how it would go down.
Despite likely not finding success in cinemas, this is the era of the video rental, so the film might likely find an audience at home and become a cult favourite. There is also the possibility that by the 2010s, with the sequel-reboot (seqoot) having become an established concept of Hollywood’s money-making industry, that Beetlejuice would receive that treatment, ignoring the events of Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian and doing a “more faithful” sequel. That version might actually wind up very close to what we saw with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice but perhaps Burton, Keaton, Ryder, O’Hara and others are less willing to return; perhaps the plot elements shared by both scripts could not be done in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice in a universe where Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian was made; and so Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is missing many elements that made that film a success.
The very idea of Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian, along with Beetlejuice in Love, Beetlejuice and the Haunted Mansion, and Beetlejuice Goes West, reminds us there was a time when Hollywood was less apprehensive about going off-piste with sequels. When in the 2020s many sequels to long-dormant franchises succeed on little more than nostalgia, becoming more of a reunion special than a bona fide film, one can grow wistful for the mere notion of Michael Keaton riding a surfboard in full Betelgeuse makeup in 1992.
In the long run, even if it had been made, it might have meant nothing, because the trend is to ride franchises long after they’re dead. And Betelgeuse was dead to begin with.
Ryan Fleming is the author of SLP's Reid in Braid and various short stories for the anthologies, as well as editing The Scottish Anthology.
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