Here’s a slightly unexpected news story that’s sure to get some people up in arms: it seems that some 23 years after the release of Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, a sequel is taking shape over at Warner Brothers. What’s more, Tim Burton does not appear to be involved. According to Deadline, the man who may end up bringing Beetlejuice back from the dead is Seth Grahame-Smith, the writer of such popular mash-up novels Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. He and his producing partner David Katzenberg (son of DreamWorks Animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg) recently set up a two-year deal with Warner Brothers, and one of their first projects is expected to be a Beetlejuice sequel. Supposedly their plan is not to remake it but “to reboot it by advancing the storyline of the original.”

Believe it or not, Tim Burton has wanted to do a Beetlejuice sequel for many years now. Back in 1990, he hired Jonathan Gems (Mars Attacks!) to write a sequel titled Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian, where the Deetz family moves to Hawaii to build a resort and discover that they are intruding on the burial ground of an ancient Hawaiian Kahuna. The script was rewritten a number of times throughout the ’90s (it was even offered to Kevin Smith at one point) but never got made. And perhaps that is for the best.

As for this new sequel, however, it also sounds a bit worrisome. Seth Grahame-Smith does have a working relationship with Tim Burton as he recently wrote the script for Burton’s upcoming Dark Shadows movie, while Burton is producing the movie adaptation of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. However, it just feels like far too much time has passed. I can’t imagine Michael Keaton reprising his role at this point, and I can’t imagine a Beetlejuice movie without Michael Keaton. What do you think… are you willing to give Beetlejuice 2 a chance?