Sony is moving forward with a Ghostbusters 5, and that’s great news for everyone who enjoyed Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Those who fondly remember the first two Ghostbusters movies directed by the late Ivan Reitman had to wait more than 30 years for another direct follow-up featuring the return of the original team. While Paul Feig’s 2016 Ghostbusters has its fans and received love from critics, the reboot left no real room for it to be set in the same universe, due to the original cast making cameos as new characters.
Directed by Ivan’s son, Jason Reitman, who is an accomplished filmmaker in his own right, Ghostbusters: Afterlife ended up delayed more than a year due to COVID-19, but thankfully it proved to be worth the wait when it finally did arrive in November 2021. While detractors did accuse Afterlife of drawing too heavily on nostalgia, those who love the film have praised such aspects as the likability of the new cast members and the respectful way in which the classic team was used. There was also a nice tribute included to the late Harold Ramis, even if it went a little too far in changing the Egon Spengler character.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife was a decent-sized box office success, and naturally, there were almost immediate rumblings of a possible follow-up. It took a while, but Sony has finally allowed Afterlife‘s proponents to breathe a sigh of relief, as Ghostbusters 5 is on the way. Details on the story, cast, and crew aren’t yet available, but considering it hasn’t even been a year since Afterlife was released, the smart money says Sony plans to strike while the iron is hot and make a proper sequel. Afterlife smartly left many doors open for a potential continuation as well as further development of its new characters, and now that looks to be happening.
With Winston (Ernie Hudson) now a rich businessman who owns the old Ghostbusters firehouse and Peter (Bill Murray) and Ray (Dan Aykroyd) showing a willingness to strap their proton packs back on if duty calls, there are clear opportunities to make use of the classic cast again. Winston could serve as boss to a new Ghostbusters team, with Peter and Ray being sort of player-coach types, or perhaps purely mentors to the young squad. And said squad could provide an easy basis for the return of Egon’s granddaughter Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and grandson Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), plus their friends Podcast (Logan Kim) and Lucky (Celeste O’Connor), as well as Paul Rudd’s Mr. Grooberson.
Grooberson idolizes the Ghostbusters, and after his experiences in Afterlife, he would surely jump at the chance to suit up as a proper hunter and trapper of ghosts. As for the kids, they could be made Ghostbusters-in-training, perhaps leading to a conflict over just how much responsibility they should be able to handle at such a young age. There’s also still precious little known about Egon’s family life before he took off to protect humanity from Gozer, or what Winston, Ray, and Peter got up to in the decades after battling Vigo in Ghostbusters 2. So much narrative territory is available to explore that it would have been almost criminal to not continue Afterlife‘s story with a Ghostbusters 5.
