Summon Your ‘Beetlejuice’ Knowledge in Our Quiz

Sammy Davis Jr. was the first choice to play the title role for director Tim Burton, 65 — but producer David Geffen, 81, suggested Michael Keaton, 72, who had starred in ’80s comedies including Night Shift and Mr. Mom (and went on to star in Burton’s 1989 hit Batman).

According to Screen Rant, Warner Bros. was worried that the name of the film was confusing and didn’t explain enough of the premise, and the studio begged Burton to change it. Some of the alternatives that were considered included House Ghosts and Anonymous Haunted House Story 39480, but in the end, Burton prevailed, and the title remained simply Beetlejuice.

Anjelica Huston, 73, was first cast as Delia but dropped out due to an illness — three years later, she played Morticia Addams in another otherworldly comedy, The Addams Family. Catherine O’Hara, 70, benefited in more ways than one: The actress met her future husband, production designer Bo Welch, 72, on the Beetlejuice set.

Adam and Barbara Maitland (played by Alec Baldwin, 66, and Geena Davis, 68) find the book after dying in a car crash. Adam initially misreads the title as “Diseased” and complains that the text “reads like stereo instructions.”

As a young woman with macabre interests who is secure in her weirdness, Lydia blazed a trail for goth girls in the ’80s and ’90s. She’s a spiritual successor to Wednesday Addams — a proto-goth character Tim Burton recently revived in the Netflix series Wednesday. (Incidentally, Wednesday actress Jenna Ortega plays Lydia’s daughter in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.)