Tim Burton has said that this film would only be made if Michael Keaton would return to reprise his role. Keaton said in March of 2014 that this is the only sequel he's interested in doing.
Michael Keaton shared that early in production, he and Tim Burton discussed how neither one of them was particularly interested in doing something that was too technology-heavy. "It had to feel handmade," he said. "What made it fun was watching somebody in the corner actually holding something up for you, to watch everybody in the shrunken head room and say, 'Those are people under there, operating these things, trying to get it right.'" He continued, "It's the most exciting thing when you get to do that again after years of standing in front of a giant screen, pretending somebody's across the way from you."
Michael Keaton revealed making the sequel was more fun than the original, he stated: "it took a while to get there, I didn't really think we were going to do it and didn't want to do it, various times in the last few years, but it was more fun than the other one."
Tim Burton typically hates doing studio films as he always feels exhausted and drained, but he legitimately enjoyed making Beetlejuice 2. He says, "On this last one, Beetlejuice 2, I really enjoyed it. I tried to strip everything and go back to the basics of working with good people and actors and puppets. It was kind of like going back to why I liked making movies."