Credit: Sony PicturesIt feels like a lifetime ago that Ghostbusters fans were almost praying for a new movie. It took 27 years for that to happen after Ghostbusters II (1989). Unfortunately, that arrived in the form of a reboot in 2016, which was so divisive it split the fandom down the middle.
Ghostbusters: Answer the Call (2016) was met with mostly negative reviews from audiences and critics, and the $229 million that it caught in its streams worldwide (against a $144 million budget) forced Sony Pictures to put the reboot in the Ecto Containment Unit and rethink its strategy. At the time, the Ghostbusters franchise seemed dead again. Or undead.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife Relaunched the Franchise
Call it luck, call it fate, but fast-forward five years, and we got Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021), a sequel to the original two films that starred Bill Murray (Peter Venkman), Harold Ramis (Egon Spengler), Ernie Hudson (Winston Zeddemore), and Dan Aykroyd (Ray Stantz). It was directed by Jason Reitman, son of the late Ivan Reitman, who helmed the first two films.
For all its flaws (it has more callbacks to the original film than New York City had ghosts during the rise of Gozer in 1984), Afterlife put the franchise back on the map and grossed $204.3 million against a more modest budget of $75 million in the process, paving the way for a sequel with Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024), which saw Gil Kenan take the wheel.
Similarly to the reboot, Frozen Empire ended up more or less doubling its budget ($202 million against $100 million), and got mixed to negative reviews across the board. With that said, the Ghostbusters franchise has still continued to expand since then, mostly through games and comic books (with the latter now residing under Dark Horse and not IDW).
But now, Ghostbusters is finally getting the Stranger Things treatment.
Ghostbusters Is Getting a Netflix Series
Netflix and Sony Pictures Animation’s animated Ghostbusters series, which was first announced four years ago now, has received a pretty big update.
The streamer has revealed in its Annecy lineup (per Deadline) that Dan Aykroyd, writer and star of the original Ghostbusters (1984), has boarded the series as an executive producer, joining Ben Hibon, Elliott Kalan, Jason Reitman, Gil Kenan, and Amie Karp in that lineup.
The series will mark the franchise’s third time in animated form, following The Real Ghostbusters (1986-1991) and Extreme Ghostbusters (1997).
Related: ‘Ghostbusters’ Cinematic Universe Will Include New Sequels, TV Shows, and More
While plot details are being kept under wraps, Frozen Empire director Gil Kenan previously described the project as “the next generation of Ghostbusters animated television.”
Whether the animated series will be similar to Stranger Things: Tales From ’85, which premiered on the streamer last month, remains to be seen. That series consists of 10 episodes and takes place between seasons 2 and 3 of the flagship series, telling an entirely new story but with the same characters.
Kenan also said the upcoming series will “reach into the future” of “an unexplored era and decade of Ghostbusters canon,” so it’s unlikely to orbit its respective films in close proximity.
We also don’t know if it will be canon with the four mainline films.
There’s also an untitled animated Ghostbusters movie in the works at Netflix.
As for future live-action Ghostbusters films, that remains a mystery.
In an interview with The Direct in 2024, Kenan revealed that he was in talks with Jason Reitman about future Ghostbusters movies.
“We take the responsibility and the joy of being the keepers of the flame of Ghostbusters very seriously,” he said. “We definitely are continuing the conversation of telling big Ghostbusters stories on the big screen. And stay tuned. There’ll be more. There’ll be more about that later.” However, there have been no updates around any more movies since.
The animated Ghostbusters series will debut exclusively on Netflix sometime in 2027.
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