Ghostbusters Frozen Empire Cast Members Nerd Out Over Legacy Ghostbusters In BTS Clip

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire continued an iconic film franchise in style by assembling a team of original and new Ghostbusters alike, and Screen Rant has a clip about the importance of the legacy cast. The movie picked up after the events of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, transporting the Spengler crew—Callie, Phoebe, Trevor, and Gary Grooberson—to New York City and giving them the opportunity to build relationships with characters from the first Ghostbusters.

Screen Rant is happy to debut a featurette clip about the Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire cast, specifically the return of legacy cast members Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, Dan Aykroyd, and Bill Murray. In the clip, cast members and co-writer and producer Jason Reitman discuss the opportunity the sequel presented to spend more time with characters like Ray Stantz and Winston Zeddemore. Take a look at the clip, which is part of one of a number of digital bonuses and featurettes that come with Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, which can be bought or rented now.

How Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Got Its Legacy Cast Right

Over the last decade, long-awaited sequels featuring legacy cast members have become increasingly more common. Some films do this to better effect than others, but Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire manages its legacy cast rather well by making them crucial to the story without detracting from the journeys of newer characters. As director Gil Kenan revealed when discussing who would be Ghostbusters 6’s central character, it’s important to the filmmakers to put characters like McKenna Grace’s Phoebe at the forefront. Characters like Ray and Winston a joy to watch in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, but it’s Phoebe and her family who hold the keys to the franchise’s future.

Thankfully, members of the legacy Ghostbusters function as more than nostalgia bait. Many of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire’s new inventions are thanks to a lab funded by Winston, and Ray is instrumental in understanding the movie’s major threat. Even William Atherton’s Walter Peck is a major player in the film, and the fact that his continuing hatred of the Ghostbusters results in difficulties for Phoebe—not just the original group—makes him a more consequential character.

The filmmakers behind Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire were also smart in how they deployed the legacy cast, saving a showstopping all-in reunion for the end of the movie. Even the long-awaited return of Slimer paid off in the finale, turning a complicated juggling act into a no-holds-barred conclusion. It couldn’t have been an easy task managing a cast that large, but in combining four decades of cast members in one movie, Gil Kenan, Jason Reitman, and the rest have definitively answered the question: “Who You Gonna Call?”