If it wasn’t for the Coronavirus pandemic, we’d have been getting our Ghostbusters fix in July from the release of Jason Reitman’s Afterlife, but we’ll now need to wait until next March to find out if the fourth installment in the long-running franchise will turn out to be a worthy and more widely-accepted entry in the series than Paul Feig’s incredibly divisive 2016 reboot.
The ongoing health crisis has decimated Hollywood’s upcoming release schedule, with the industry bracing itself for a $20 billion shortfall as theaters around the world remain closed, with many of them facing severe financial repercussions. As a result, re-releases of older titles have been finding themselves battling for supremacy at the box office, with Jurassic Park recently becoming the number one movie in America almost three decades after it was first released.
The renaissance of the drive-in has also seen beloved classics like Jaws, Back to the Future and The Matrix claim spots in the top ten as movie fans prove that not even huge societal restrictions on everyday life will stop them from trying to enjoy the theatrical experience in any way possible, and now Ghostbusters will be following suit when it heads to both cinemas and drive-ins on July 1st.
The latest re-release for the 1984 original is part of the celebrations to mark Ghostbusters Day, which was originally scheduled for this month but was pushed back as virtually everything has been recently. A special message for audiences is also set to play before the movie, and the prospect of possibly seeing some new footage from Afterlife or something featuring the original cast will no doubt be enough to convince many longtime fans to check it out on the big screen once again.
