HELL'S FROZEN OVER

AS THE GHOSTBUSTERS HEAD BACK TO NEW YORK FOR ANOTHER CHILLING ADVENTURE, SFX MEETS THE DIRECTOR BEHIND AFTERLIFE FOLLOW-UP FROZEN EMPIRE

- JACK SHEPHERD

WHEN GHOSTBUSTERS: Afterlife reached cinemas, the franchise was a proton blast away from being trapped and tossed into the basement for another 30 years. Paul Feig’s female-fronted reboot in 2016 had disappointed at the box office, and no one knew whether that misfire would haunt Afterlife as it tried to win back audiences by bringing back the original ’Busters.

“With Afterlife, [director] Jason [Reitman] and I felt, both in conceiving and writing it, and then watching that film come to life, that it was like finding a rusty old proton pack wrapped in a cloth in the garage and having to dust it off, turn it on, and see if it still fires,” co-writer Gil Kenan tells SFX.

“A lot of that film was about tapping into the original spark of inspiration for Ghostbusters and rekindling it, both in terms of new characters and audiences, so that same magic could be brought back into focus on the screen. That was the goal, and we’re immensely proud of the characters that were brought to the screen.”

The result was a resounding success, not only financially and critically but with the franchise’s fans, who approved of the creative team’s choice to focus on Egon Spengler’s family as they reckoned with the founding Ghostbuster’s history of spirit-hunting.

“Afterlife was introducing the world to the Spengler family and to the idea that Ghostbusters could be a going concern into the 21st century,” Kenan continues. “But that was laying the groundwork for a world of storytelling. Now the toys are laid out on the floor, ready to be played with.”