Beetlejuice Beetlejuice welcomes back several key stars – but not Jeffrey Jones (second from L) (Picture: Warner Bros)
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.
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Jones played Lydia’s father Charles Deetz, but is now a convicted sex offender (Picture: Geffen/Warner Bros/Kobal/Shutterstock)
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 three-year prison term with his plea deal, Jones was sentenced to five years’ probation, ordered to undergo counselling and was placed on the sex offenders register for the rest of his life, according to Entertainment Weekly at the time.
Following his sentencing, Jones read out a statement outside the courthouse, which said: ‘This concludes a really painful chapter in my life. I am sorry that this incident was allowed to occur. Such an event has never happened before and it will never happen again.’
Jones’ lawyer, Leonard Levine, added that the accusations against his client were ‘just a case about photographs’, without Jones being accused of any unlawful sexual act or touching in relation to the boy.
Jones apologised for the ‘incident’, which has since impacted his career (Picture: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc)
‘He hopes at some point the public will forgive him and he can go on with his life and his career,’ Levine concluded, as per wire reports.
However, he was later arrested twice – first in Florida in 2004 and then in California in 2010 – for failing to update his sex offender status.
Jones is required to update his information every year.
After pleading guilty to the 2010 charge, he was given a sentence of 250 hours of community service as well as three years’ …read more
Source:: Metro
