Those who revisited Tim Burton's
original "Beetlejuice" before seeing the long-gestating sequel may have noticed
that, amid the return of familiar faces like Winona Ryder and Michael Keaton, a few main
actors are largely absent from the follow-up. "I play Charles Deetz, who is a
real estate developer in New York, who's had a bit of a nervous breakdown." As the teaser trailer for "Beetlejuice
Beetlejuice" revealed, the film sees the Deetz family reunited for the
funeral of patriarch Charles Deetz, played by "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"
actor Jeffrey Jones in the original movie. "I can't believe grandpa's dead."
"Death is hard." "Yeah, sometimes I think life is harder." As we learn in a flashback, Charles died on
a bird-watching vacation overseas when his plane went down in the ocean and he was
eaten by a shark. Throughout the movie, we see glimpses of Charles wandering around
the afterlife, his entire upper body missing, constantly spraying blood everywhere he goes. There's also a brief shot that includes a photo of Jones' face on a gravestone. So
why does the movie kill Charles off? "We're gonna have to decide
what goes and what stays." "Everything goes." Burton hasn't been specifically asked
about this in any interviews yet, but it's probably safe to assume the
reason Jeffrey Jones doesn't appear in "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" is because the
actor was arrested in 2002 and pleaded no contest to inducing a 14-year-old boy to
pose for sexually explicit photographs. Jones was sentenced to five years probation
and ordered to register as a sex offender, and was subsequently arrested two more times
for failing to update his sex offender status, tacking on more years of probation as a result. Jones' career took a significant hit after that
initial arrest, as you might expect. He did some voice work on a "Stuart Little" TV show and
the series "Invader ZIM," and has only been credited in a few feature films since 2002 —"Who's
Your Caddy?" and "10.0 Earthquake" among them. His highest profile work this century
has been on the HBO series "Deadwood," where creator David Milch had
hired Jones before he was first arrested and continued to support him
through the aftermath of that incident. In an interview that appears in "The Deadwood
Bible," Jones even says Milch lent him money for a defense in a civil suit that was
brought against him for the same crime. From the outside looking in, it seems
obvious that Warner Bros. Discovery made the decision to avoid any potential
controversies by not bringing Jones back. Under the leadership of CEO David Zaslav, the
studio has not been doing well since its merger, so they were clearly eager for "Beetlejuice
Beetlejuice" to be a huge hit—and, with no controversies in sight and
a $145M global box office so far, it's safe to say that mission was accomplished.