It’s been more than two years since it was announced that Jason Reitman (son of Ivan Reitman, the original film’s director) was set to take over the “Ghostbusters” franchise for a new film, titled “Ghostbusters: Afterlife.” The long delay between when the announcement happened and the film’s upcoming release has to do with the COVID pandemic, but according to one of the franchise’s biggest names, Bill Murray, the wait will definitely be worth it.
Speaking to Collider, Murray explained why he was initially reluctant to return to the “Ghostbusters” franchise for another film. However, after a phone call from Jason Reitman, he was intrigued about what the director had up his sleeve.
“I remember [Jason Reitman] calling me and saying, ‘I’ve got an idea for another “Ghostbusters.” I’ve had this idea for years,’” said Murray. “I thought, ‘What the heck could that possibly be?’ I remember him when he was a kid. I remember his Bar Mitzvah. I was like, ‘What the heck? What does this kid know?’ But he had a really, really wonderful idea that he wrote with another wonderful guy that I got to work with, Gil Kenan, who made ‘City of Ember.’ The two of them wrote a ‘Ghostbusters’ movie that really brings it back to life. It really has the feel of the first one, more than the second one or the girls’ one. It has a different feel than two out of four.”
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He continued, “I think he’s really got something. It was hard. It was really hard. That’s why I think it’s gonna be good. We were just in it for a little while, but it was physically painful. Wearing those packs is extremely uncomfortable. We had batteries the size of batteries. They now have batteries the size of earrings. It’s still a really heavy thing to wear, all the time. The special effects in this one are a lot of wind and dirt in your face, and there was a lot of going down and getting back up. I was like, ‘What is this? What am I doing? These are like Bulgarian deadlifts, or a Russian kettlebell, getting up and down with this thing on my back.’ It was very uncomfortable. Usually, when something has a very high misery quotient, something comes of that and some quality is produced that, if you can capture it and project it, comes on the screen and affects you. I think it comes out sometime in the fall. They’ve delayed it for a year or a year and a half, but I’m glad they did. It will be worth seeing.”
Issues with the production and his personal comfort aside, it does appear that Murray is pretty excited to return to “Ghostbusters” and show fans what they’ve been working on. Of course, after the release of 2016’s “Ghostbusters: Answer the Call,” which saw the franchise rebooted with an all-female cast, there’s been a lot of negative discussion about the fandom surrounding the film series. Fans are clearly willing to stoop to pretty low levels if they don’t enjoy the direction of “Ghostbusters,” but with Murray signing off on the new film and a Reitman family member behind the camera, it would appear that ‘Afterlife’ has a decent shot at appealing to those fans that were ridiculously upset over Paul Feig’s reboot.
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Of course, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens when “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” debuts in theaters on November 11.
