36 years after the original Beetlejuice, Tim Burton summoned a sequel that grossed a lively $450 million at the global box office. But the filmmaker, 66, is ruling out revisiting two films that have since passed into the afterlife: 1990’s Edward Scissorhands, which Burton directed as his followup to the 1989 blockbuster Batman, and 1993’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, the Henry Selick-directed stop-motion film conceived by Burton during his time as a Disney animator.
Although Burton expects there to be another collaboration with Depp in his future — after Edward Scissorhands, he went on to star in Burton’s Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland, and 2012’s Dark Shadows — it won’t be for an Edward Scissorhands sequel.
“There are certain films I don’t want to make a sequel to. I didn’t want to make a sequel to [Edward Scissorhands] because it felt like a one-off thing,” Burton told attendees during a Marrakech Q&A, according to IndieWire. “I didn’t want to have a sequel for The Nightmare Before Christmas because it also felt like a one-off thing. Certain things are best left on their own and that for me is one of them.”
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Although not mentioned by Burton, both of those films are controlled by Disney. Burton, who directed the live-action Alice in Wonderland and Dumbo for the studio, has suggested he wouldn’t return to Disney after negatively comparing making Dumbo to a circus.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was Burton’s first film since Dumbo in 2019, and Burton’s first sequel since Batman Returns in 1992. Originally slated as a straight-to-streaming movie, the $100-million Beetlejuice 2 instead delivered Warner Bros. a hit after a string of summer box office flops Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, The Watchers, and Horizon: An America Saga – Chapter 1. Burton will return to the studio for a remake of the 1958 B-movie Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, which is semi-confirmed as his next project.
“One thing I learned very early on is until I’m actually on a set doing something, I don’t know if I’m doing it,” he told IndieWire. “I never like to talk about things too much. I’ve worked on so many projects, sometimes they happen, sometimes they don’t happen, so I don’t want to jinx anything. I mean, I was doing [Superman Lives] once. There was another project that I worked for a year on, and it didn’t happen. It’s quite traumatic, it’s quite emotional.”
Burton has long ruled out granting Disney permission to produce a Nightmare Before Christmas sequel, although the story of the Halloween and Christmas holiday staple has continued in the form of novels and comic books.
“I’ve done sequels, I’ve done other things, I’ve done reboots, I’ve done all that sh-t, right? I don’t want that to happen to [The Nightmare Before Christmas]. It’s nice that people are maybe interested [in another one], but I’m not,” Burton said in 2023. “I feel like that old guy who owns a little piece of property and won’t sell to the big power plant that wants to take my land.”
Burton is less opposed to making a Beetlejuice 3, although he jokingly remarked that he would be “over 100 [years old]” by the time another decades-later sequel gets the green light. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice producer Tommy Harper, who also executive produced the Burton-directed Wednesday series, said that “the door is open” for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, although it remains to be seen if it comes to life under Burton.
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