The last time we got a new Ghostbusters movie, the result was one of the most divisive blockbusters ever made. The knives were out for Paul Feig’s reboot from almost the second it was first announced, and some fans just couldn’t handle the idea of the team being played by an all-female cast. The widespread trolling campaign is one of the major reasons why it ended up disappointing at the box office, but Feig should just go ahead and release his three hour cut anyway to see what kind of reaction it gets in 2020.
In an ideal world, we’d have already seen Ghostbusters: Afterlife by now, but the latest installment in the franchise became one of the first major releases to be yanked from the schedule as the Coronavirus pandemic took hold, and at this point, it won’t arrive until next March. We’re yet to see any new footage from the movie despite the fact that it should have been very close to completion when it was delayed, but director Jason Reitman is probably holding off until the marketing campaign kicks off at the start of next year.
The original cast will all be back again, that much we know, except this time, they’ll actually be reprising their roles as the Ghostbusters. And in a recent interview, Erie Hudson admitted that Afterlife is looking to give the fans everything that they want.
“There have been so many announcements and so many things that fell apart. It wasn’t until I got the script and read the script that I thought, ‘Not only is it happening, but this is really good’. It’s really in line with what the fans have been hoping for, and it really ties into the first two movies. I like the movie with the ladies, but it was kind of a different take on it. So once I got the script I began to get excited about it and felt like I knew something definite. But up until then, it was still ‘if, maybe, and whatever’.”
Doubling down on fan service and nostalgia is all well and good, but a lot of recent movies have forgotten to focus on telling a decent story in the process, so let’s hope that Ghostbusters: Afterlife manages to strike that delicate balance and finally give fans the sequel they’ve been asking for.
