Beetlejuice fans who don’t already know will be in for an unpleasant shock when they discover the upsetting reason actor Jeffrey Jones didn’t return for the sequel alongside other original stars. Of course, in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – the follow-up 36 years in the making to Tim Burton’s original horror-comedy movie from 1988 – Michae Keaton is back as the titular ghost , wise-cracking his way through the Afterlife – and the realm of the living, where he can. Winona Ryder also reprises her role as Lydia Deetz, with Jenna Ortega joining the cast as her teenage daughter Astrid and Catherine O’Hara back as Lydia’s kooky artist stepmother Delia.
Other new additions include Willem Dafoe, Justin Theroux and Monica Bellucci – but Jones, who played Lydia’s father Charles Deetz, is not featured in the film . Beetlejuice 2 does, however, find ingenious ways to reference and depict his character – including some very Burton-esque stop-motion animation. Although no statement has been made on the matter by Burton or Jones himself, the actor’s career – which had included movies like Amadeus and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – was interrupted when he was arrested in 2002.
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a webbrowser that supports HTML5video Jones, now 77, pleaded no contest the following year for possession of child pornography after allegedly hiring a 14-year-old boy to pose nude for photographs. After skirting a possible thre.