After making buddy-friends with Tim Burton on the set of Dark Shadows (by writing the screenplay), Seth Grahame-Smith and his producing partner David Katzenberg have signed a deal with Warner Brothers, for which they will be writing two new scripts. And one of those scripts, we hear, has a very good chance of being a reboot/sequel to Beetlejuice. Guys, if you wanted to resurrect Beetlejuice, you just have to say: “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.” But then, you’ll have to marry him, so we understand why you’d go through the trouble of making a deal with WB.
Grahame-Smith is also the author of the supernatural literary mashups Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (both of which are being made into movies), if his name sounds familiar. After Burton liked his screenplay for Dark Shadows (which stars Johnny Depp), talks started between Grahame-Smith and Katzenberg and their company, KatzSmith. WB has grown very fond of the young team and asked them to write two screenplays for them, including a reboot of Burton’s 1988 movie (which we can’t mention anymore so as not to suddenly end up in the Netherworld AGAIN and AGAIN). The new story will “advance on the original storyline,” which was about a dead couple trying to push the living residents of their home out with the help of the Host with the Most himself.
But I think what we’d all really like to know is if Johnny Depp is just going to do us all the big favor of playing Beetlejuice. Come on — it crossed your mind. And probably everyone else’s. The possibility of this is most likely unlikely, but people will wonder about it until there is definitive word that no, Johnny Depp is not playing Beetlejuice.
You may recall that the movie was spun off into a delightful, pun-filled cartoon show that put Lydia Deetz front and center. Go ahead and find an episode of it on YouTube. I’ll bet you had no idea how many puns were really in that show, did you?
(Deadline)
