Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is a busy movie. It's got the new group of Ghostbusters, the old group of Ghostbusters, a guy who's the heir to an entirely separate Ghostbusting tradition, and tons of accompanying new lore about that and the terrifying new spirit threat. It's a lot of stuff to balance, but new director Gil Kenan has some experience with that--he co-wrote Ghostbusters: Afterlife with that film's director, Jason Reitman, and Afterlife was a similarly full flick.

Reitman, whose father Ivan directed the original two Ghostbusters movies, stuck around to help Kenan write Frozen Empire--Kenan described the younger Reitman to me as "my writing partner, and creative collaborator and best friend for a long time"--and the task of both balancing so many disparate elements and even unifying them required all their effort.

"It sort of happens in a couple of ways. One is, we're fans, right? Even though for Jason, this is deeply personal, and was his family business growing up. I saw the first movie with my dad in a movie theater when I was seven," Kenan told me. "I'd never met any single person in my life until I was like 16, or 17, who had ever worked on a movie. For me, it was purely from the outside looking in. But that doesn't mean that my relationship to these characters was any different than for Jason, even though he knew the actors playing them. He, just like me, has a deep love for these characters. And that love comes from us wanting the best for them as fans.