Chalk another ‘80s movie up to the reboot/sequel/remake trend. Deadline is reporting that Warner Bros. is set to reboot the 1988 Tim Burton-Michael Keaton comedy Beetlejuice with the intention of advancing the storyline from the original.
The reboot is part of a first-look deal signed by producer/director/writers David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith. As part of the deal, Grahame-Smith will write two scripts for Warner Bros., with the distinct possibility of Beetlejuice 2 being one of them. The duo collaborated on the MTV series The Hard Times of RJ Berger, based on a short film by Katzenberg about a well-endowed high school nerd.
Grahame-Smith also wrote best-selling novels Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and adapted the script for the latter which is being directed by Wanted’s Timur Bekmambetov for a June 22, 2012 release.
"We want to make big movies based on big ideas and inspired by the comedies we grew up loving," Grahame-Smith said. Katzenberg (who happens to be Jeffrey Katzenberg’s son) added, "We’re young, we’ve got a lot to learn and we are going to have producers who
help us on the first couple big films. Warner Bros. is a studio that gets behind its movies and is filmmaker-friendly."
There are a number of other projects that the duo will give the studio a first look at, including an adaptation to Grahame-Smith’s next novel We Three Kings, a large-scale revisionist telling of what the Three Wise Men from the Bible were doing in the manger that fateful night.
Beetlejuice 2 is sure to raise the biggest uproar though. No cast or director has been attached to the proposed project but you can pretty much bank on the movie getting a cheesy 3D gimmick.
What do you think of a Beetlejuice reboot? Who should direct and who should play "the ghost with the most?"
