Will Beetlemania transform Jenna Ortega into the first Gen Z star?

The actress, who found fame in the Netflix hit Wednesday, is tipped to become as bankable as Julia Roberts or Brad Pitt.

Jenna Ortega’s credits include (from left) 2022’s Scream, the sequel to Beetlejuice and the Netflix series Wednesday.

Once upon a time the film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer used to boast that it employed more stars than there are in heaven. Today in Hollywood that Golden Age sparkle is a distant memory and the arrival of new leading actors has slowed to a trickle.

But the idea of a movie star is not dead yet – and next month could see the crowning of the first such star born in the new ­millennium.

The vehicle is Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Tim Burton’s follow-up to his classic dark comedy. It will open the Venice Film Festival on August 28. Michael Keaton, who headlined the 1988 original, will return alongside Winona Ryder and Catherine O’Hara. Yet it is the presence of Jenna Ortega that is attracting the most buzz.

Ortega, 21, is best known for playing the lead role in Netflix’s vastly successful Addams Family spin-off Wednesday, which Burton executive-produced. A second run is due on screens imminently but it was Beetlejuice Beetlejuice that persuaded Vanity Fair to put Ortega on its September cover. Her performance in it “cements her as a mistress of the macabre, poised to become Gen Z’s answer to Ryder”, the magazine said.

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is a unique property. It is setting Ortega up for being a star,” says Michael Niederman, professor emeritus of cinema and TV arts at Columbia College Chicago. “But what closes the deal is the movie after that. That has always been the challenge.”

In Ortega’s case, that looks set to be a prestigious literary adaptation mining our fascination with artificial intelligence: the title role in Klara and the Sun, an adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s best-selling novel.

Buzz is building for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice with advertising in busy locations such as the New York subway. Picture: AFP

Whether she can emulate or surpass the success of other ascending actors such as Zendaya and Timothee Chalamet is uncertain. In the 1990s, moviegoers would buy tickets for the latest project from Julia Roberts or Sandra Bullock, while Leonardo ­DiCaprio and Brad Pitt have been bankable for decades. Then the streaming revolution and the rise of comic book adaptations turned Hollywood’s business model upside down.

Now, franchises rule and superhero titles are for the most part more valuable to a studio than the actor playing them. Speaking on a podcast last year, Quentin ­Tarantino said: “Part of the Marvel-isation of Hollywood is you have all these actors who have become famous playing these characters. But they’re not movie stars, right? Captain America is the star. Thor is the star.”

More than a century of box office receipts show the film industry needs charismatic figureheads. “It was star-driven from the beginning,” says Joe Rosenberg, a professor at Chapman University’s film school in California. “Stars played a large part in why people went to see movies.”

Rosenberg, who as a talent agent represented directors including Ridley Scott, David Fincher and Terry Gilliam, says Ortega’s canny control of her career puts her on the edge of genuine stardom. Her role in Wednesday achieved viral fame, with the series attracting a billion viewing hours.

“She’s got a feel for the right project at the right time and hopefully she is being guided smartly,” Rosenberg says. “The role of Wednesday was perfect. You look at her and think, ‘Who else could play this part?’ ”

Stars on the rise are not merely looking for jobs to pay the rent but roles that will build a reputation, Rosenberg says. “It’s almost like they’re looking at the chessboard we call Hollywood and they’re five steps ahead of most of the talent that’s just looking to go from job to job,” he added.

Ortega as Wednesday Addams in Wednesday, pictured with Thing.

Ortega’s career suggests she takes a long-term view. Born into a Mexican-American family in the California desert, she began as a child actor in the TV comedy-drama Jane the Virgin before landing a lead role in the Disney Channel show Stuck in the Middle.

Ortega starred in the 2022 slasher movie Scream and later that year the defining role of her career to date hit screens. A dance performed and choreographed by Ortega on Wednesday became a viral sensation and tween girls around the world fell in love with the character.

It has not been all smooth sailing. Last year Ortega made comments on a podcast about changing her lines in Wednesday without talking to the show’s writers. The remarks, which came ahead of a Hollywood strike, provoked a backlash from screenwriters who accused Ortega of being entitled.

The storm passed – but in some ways the hard work is only beginning. “Becoming a star is always hard but not impossible,” Niederman says. “Staying a star is where the real challenge is.”

The Sunday Times

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice opens in Australia on September 5.