To mark the 38th anniversary of the original Ghostbusters movie, Sony threw the annual Ghostbusters Day celebration in Los Angeles. The June 8th fan event came with a ton of new announcements, including Ghostbusters: Afterlife sequel details, a cartoon series coming to Netflix, and more info on the long-gestating animated film. Update – June 28th: Sony has announced the Afterlife sequel will hit theaters on December 20th, 2023.
The freshest news would be the Netflix cartoon, coming from Sony Pictures Animation with Ghost Corps, Inc.’s Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan (co-writers of Afterlife, with the former directing) onboard as executive producers. The series will take place “in canon” of the core story, but will “navigate an unexplored era.” According to Variety, the series is “in development” and has yet to be picked up for a full series.
Reitman’s father, the late Ivan Reitman, was said to have been working on a cartoon show (the franchise’s third following The Real Ghostbusters and Extreme Ghostbusters) back in 2015, but it’s unclear if this Netflix show is built off his original “futuristic” concept. However, an animated movie was also a “passion project” for Reitman, his son said — and that too is coming to fruition.
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Also in the works since 2015, the animated film will feature brand new characters and “take us to places that we’ve never been before,” Kenan told The Hollywood Reporter. Confirmed during Ghostbusters Day is news that the project will be helmed by Jennifer Klauska (Hotel Transylvania: Transformania) and Chris Prynoski (EP on Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe), with writer Brenda Hsueh (Disjointed, How I Met Your Mother) penning the script.
“An animated series and an animated film will allow us to go deeper into places that Dan Aykroyd talked about when he first talked about Ghostbusters,” teased Reitman. Fans will take that as a hint the cartoons will explore futuristic and perhaps even interdimensional settings.
Finally, Reitman and Kenan also delivered new details about the Afterlife sequel. They confirmed the next film will continue the story of the Spengler family, (Carrie Coon’s Callie, Finn Wolfhard’s Trevor, and Mckenna Grace’s Phoebe), though precisely who would return wasn’t announced.
It was revealed, however, that Ernie Hudson’s Winston Zeddemore would be returning and have a prominent role in the future of the franchise. To that end, the sequel will indeed take place in New York and involve the original Ghostbusters firehouse, as teased in the Afterlife post-credits scene. In fact, the sequel’s code name was revealed to be “Firehouse.”
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“The character of Winston Zeddemore and Zeddemore Industries figures strongly into the future of Ghostbusters,” said Reitman.
