“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” finally hits theaters this weekend, but some special magic had to happen for the followup to Tim Burton’s beloved 1988 classic to take shape. Burton brings back much of the cast for the sequel, with Michael Keaton returning as the titular demon trickster and Catherine O’Hara and Winona Ryder reprising their roles as Delia and Lydia Deetz, respectively. But it was Jenna Ortega joining the original stars – playing Astrid, Ryder’s daughter and O’Hara’s granddaughter – who ultimately served as the lynchpin for “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”

“Jenna had to be born, become an actress and work with Tim,” O’Hara said in a recent interview with CNN, explaining why the sequel took so long to “click.” She went on to say that Burton “thinking of this young girl’s life from her point of view, I think going deeper into that” and “seeing what an amazing actress (Ortega) is” served as the inspiration the director needed for the sequel to materialize.

The “Wednesday” star wasn’t born for nearly 15 more years after the first “Beetlejuice” came out, and she didn’t see the original film until she was about nine years old in the mid-2010’s, but Ortega was the perfect addition to long-awaited sequel. Ortega told CNN that Burton offered her the “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” role while they were working together on the second season of Netflix hit show “Wednesday,” which is based on another dark and macabre franchise – namely “The Addams Family.” (The “Beetlejuice” sequel is written by the co-creators of “Wednesday.”) “I just was having a meeting with him about ‘Wednesday’ and he plopped the ‘Beetlejuice’ script in my lap,” Ortega recalled, going on to add that she “just never anticipated” that she was going be a part of the project. “And then I read the script pretty much immediately, and obviously seeing Tim’s passion for it and having passion for not only the first film, but then the character Astrid herself, it just kind of felt like an almost instantaneous decision,” she said of taking on the role.

Reprising roles that helped catapult their careers back in the ’80s, Ryder and O’Hara said that returning to the world of “Beetlejuice” was fulfilling, both professionally and personally. “There’s just nothing like it,” Ryder shared. “It’s in its own genre. That is a testament to Tim,” she added of director Burton, who she said created a “whole genre” somewhere between thriller and comedy with “a lot of different things embroidered together.” “It was really thrilling to get to go back to that,” she added. “It’s incredible to me that he was able to create that same energy of intimacy and freedom and trying new things.”

Ortega said she learned from both Ryder and O’Hara, whom she called a “comedy legend.” “I feel like Winona has this quality to her that – I’ve never quite seen anything like it before,” the “Scream VI” star said of her onscreen “Beetlejuice” mom. “Where someone could be so honest and vulnerable with their eyes, but still containing some sort of mysterious quality to her.”

Since the sequel took more than 30 years to come together, it might be too early to consider a third film to complete a “Beetlejuice” trilogy, but the three women said they would be open to returning, should Burton have a third film up his sleeve. After all, the only way to conjure the ghost with the most is to say his name three times. But here’s hoping it won’t take another three and a half decades for a threequel to happen. “Yeah, I’d like to be alive in 30 years!” O’Hara quipped.

The 'Spark Plug' Keaton

Michael Keaton may play the Ghost with the Most in long-awaited sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, but in the eyes of his co-star Justin Theroux, he's the Lead We All Need. After 36 years, the Batman actor teams up with Tim Burton once again to reprise his role as the eponymous bio-exorcist, as Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) and her family return to Winter River following her father's sudden death. 

“You feel his spontaneity. His mind is like a spark plug; he's sparky in life, his mind works quickly. He hops around,” Theroux says of Keaton, in an exclusive interview with GamesRadar+ and Inside Total Film. “So Beetlejuice is sort of like, if you took all the volume knobs on Michael, turned them up, and then put this voice on it. It must be very fun to play that character because, you know, the ego is so out of control, and he can't be a villain. 

“There's nothing he can say that's going to make you hate him, you know? The more he says that's awful, or the more things he does that are awful, the more you kind of like him,” the Leftovers actor goes on. “He gets away with things normal people wouldn't.”

A 'Chicago Bulls' Reunion

Well, when it comes to audiences anyway... In the film, Lydia is less than thrilled about coming toe-to-toe with the green-haired ghoul once again, having been shaking off waking nightmares of him since her teens. The pair cross paths again when Lydia's daughter Astrid (Jenna Ortega) gets caught up in some afterlife-related drama and she's forced to turn to her former foe for help.

Ryder and Keaton aren't the only ones returning, either, Catherine O'Hara is also back as Lydia's eccentric artist stepmother Delia Deetz. “It's sort of like having the late '80s Chicago Bulls playing at the peak of their game, and then having to step on the court and play ball with them, you know?” Theroux laughs, having joined the follow-up as Lydia's cringe-worthy, co-dependent partner Rory. 

“You don't want to mess up what they're going to do, because you know they're going to do it beautifully, because they're all so talented,” he continues. “You want to make sure you're just singing in the same key that they're singing in. Once I got over the nerves of that, I had a really good time. It was a really fun part to play.”

The 'Beetlejuice' Franchise: A Third Time's The Charm?

Even Beetlejuice wondered whether he should resurrect himself to the land of the living. In a conversation with Entertainment Weekly for the video series Around the Table — dropping in full tomorrow — Michael Keaton joins some of his fellow Beetlejuice Beetlejuice cast members to talk about the sequel, which will be released in theaters Sep. 6 — 36 years after the original's debut. “The only thing I worried about was, should we have left it alone? You know?” Keaton says in the clip above. “Should we have just said that: 'Don't touch it. Just walk away. Go make your other movies,' which we did. So, for me, it was a big roll of the dice.”

The good thing about the sequel is that it's better in a lot of ways than the original, at least for Keaton. “This one may even be better because it's got actually a stronger story, it kind of is emotional, the cast is stupid good,” he says. “To remake something that you didn't even know might work the first time is really hard.”

Directed by Tim Burton, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice picks up with Winona Ryder's Lydia Deetz, now the host of a paranormal TV show called Ghost House and the mother of angsty teenager Astrid (Jenna Ortega). When her father, Charles, dies, three generations of Deetz women, including Lydia's stepmother, Delia (Catherine O'Hara), return to the house in Winter River to pay their respects. Then, a portal to the Afterlife is opened accidentally, prompting someone to utter the name Beetlejuice three times and bring that pesky demon back in the game once again.

Keaton joins Ortega, Willem Dafoe (playing Afterlife policeman Wolf Jackson), Monica Bellucci (playing Beetlejuice's demonic ex-wife Delores), and Justin Theroux (Lydia's boyfriend and TV producer Rory) for EW's Around the Table. “At the end of the day, if somebody said you have to pick one thing you've done how I make my living, I'd probably pick Beetlejuice for its all-encompassing thing, for just its art, you know what I mean?” Keaton says of the original film, released in 1988. “I've been in some, you know, pretty good movies, but this [the sequel] is something different.”