Beetlejuice heads to early grave in latest musical cancellation
The Eddie Perfect-penned adaptation of the Tim Burton classic has cut its upcoming Australian tour short, despite reportedly strong Adelaide sales.
Beetlejuice: The Musical’s Australian tour will be laid to rest months ahead of schedule, with its promoter citing “increasing cost pressures” and a “cautious consumer environment” for the decision.
News broke late on Friday that the show’s current Brisbane run – which opened on June 7 – would face a reduced season, with remaining stops in Perth, Adelaide and Sydney struck off the schedule. It was due to hit Adelaide in October.
“For a production of this scale, the current logistical realities of touring across vast distances between Australian cities have created increasing cost pressures that ultimately made continuing the run unsustainable,” a spokesperson for Michael Cassel Group told InReview.
“While audience enthusiasm for the show has been encouraging, a more cautious consumer environment combined with the economics of moving a production of this magnitude could not be justified. It is a difficult decision, and not one we made lightly.”
The lavish, Tony-nominated show uses large-scale puppetry to bring Burton’s distinctive gothic style to the stage, along with songs penned by Australia’s Eddie Perfect – who took on Michael Keaton’s titular lead role for the Melbourne opening run of this Australian production.
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Broadway veteran and Groundhog Day: The Musical star Andy Karl has since taken over from Perfect, and told InReview before the show’s Brisbane opening that he thought its appeal reached beyond traditional musical theatre audiences.
“What I love about this show is that if you are not a true musical theatre fan, it doesn’t matter,” Karl said.
Karl is currently expecting his first child with fiancée and Beetlejuice co-star Elise McCann, who he met on the Australian run of Groundhog Day: The Musical and had stepped aside from the upcoming tour to take parental leave.
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Beetlejuice’s short shelf life is the latest Australian musical to struggle at the box office; last year Michael Cassel Group cited slow sales when it cancelled the April 2025 Adelaide season of American hit Dear Evan Hansen.
“Despite tremendous seasons in Melbourne and Sydney, we have not seen a similar level of enthusiasm from audiences in Canberra and Adelaide and therefore touring Dear Evan Hansen there was not viable,” the group said at the time.
Another big budget Hollywood musical adaptation, Back to the Future, called time on its Sydney season early in January this year, and abandoned a planned Melbourne run.
Musical producers aren’t the only ones facing a ticketing downturn: when Adelaide Festival released its usual mid-year economic impact report last week, it revealed the 2026 festival sold around half as many tickets as the previous year, 49,458 down from 97,834 in 2025 – some of which could be attributed to the controversial cancellation of Adelaide Writers’ Week. Overall attendance for the 2026 festival was also down to 188,236 from 365,402.
Despite the gloomy news, a spokesperson for Adelaide Festival Centre told InReview that local ticket sales for Beetlejuice “were tracking very strongly” before the national tour was pulled.
“This is simply the unfortunate circumstance of an entire national tour of Beetlejuice being cancelled,” the spokesperson said. “The decision relates to the commercial viability of the national tour as a whole.”
South Australian musical fans won’t be left totally bereft. Adelaide is currently hosting Pretty Woman at Her Majesty’s Theatre, with mid-season tickets readily available. Other productions on their way include Heathers – another adaptation of a 1988 Winona Ryder film – from July 16, followed by Anastasia from August 2, and State Opera South Australia’s production of the Sondheim fairytale hit Into the Woods from August 22.
In its statement Michael Cassel Group paid tribute to Beetlejuice: The Musical‘s cast and crew, who “poured extraordinary heart and talent into this show, and they have our deepest gratitude”.
Beetlejuice: The Musical‘s final Australian performance is scheduled for July 5 at QPAC’s Lyric Theatre.
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