Tim Burton explained the absence of Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis in his Beetlejuice Continued this week.

Although Burton hired original stars Winona Ryder, Catherina O’Hara and Michael Keaton for Beetlejuice Beetlejuicehis 2024 sequel to the 1988 classic, Baldwin and Davis will not return.

“I think for me it was that I didn’t want to just check any boxes,” said Burton People“Even though they were such an amazing integral part of the first one, I focused on something else.”

In the original film, Baldwin and Davis played Adam and Barbara Maitland, a recently deceased couple who are tied to the old Connecticut house they lived in because of disagreements with the house’s new residents, the Deetz family: Charles (Jeffrey Jones), his daughter Lydia (Ryder), and Charles’ wife Delia (O’Hara).

In Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – which wowed audiences at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival on Wednesday – Jenna Ortega plays Lydia’s teenage daughter who accidentally reopens the door to the afterlife.

“A sequel like this really had to do with the times,” Burton continued. “That was my approach, the three generations of mother, daughter, granddaughter. And that (would be) the core of it. I personally couldn’t have done that in 1989 or something.”

Davis said previously Entertainment tonight in April that her theory was that she would not return because “ghosts don’t age.”

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice will be in theaters on September 6th.