Sony has debuted a new trailer for its upcoming continuation of the Ghostbusters franchise, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, taking its supernatural action from the streets of New York City to Summerville, Oklahoma.
Set to hit theaters in November, this new trailer puts its teenage cast front and center as they contend with some apocalyptic, supernatural phenomena that threaten their southwestern home.
The trailer shows off a kinetic, nostalgic film that looks as though it’ll be introducing its new cast of characters—Egon Spengler’s daughter, grandchildren and friends—as they discover their late relative’s old ghostbusting equipment hidden in a dilapidated barn. There’s the requisite number of callbacks to the original team (old photos and clips of their commercial), and it isn’t long before they discover that Oklahoma has ghosts as well, and have to gear up to try and save their home.
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Columbia Pictures has been looking to reboot the franchise for a while now, and for years, a third film that would have followed the 1984 original and its 1989 sequel, Ghostbusters II. Star Dan Aykroyd had written a script for a third installment back in the late 1990s, but the studio had trouble getting the right parts and actors back onboard for another go, and work on a direct sequel has gone through fits and starts ever since, sometimes popping onto the release schedule.
In 2016, Paul Feig helmed a remake, Ghostbusters, led by an all-female team (Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones), which was generally well-received by critics, but which attracted considerable controversy from internet users and didn’t perform all that well at the box office.
As a result, Columbia opted not to shoot a sequel to that reboot, but tapped Jason Reitman (the son of Ivan Reitman, who directed the first films) to shoot a continuation that would be set in the same world as his father’s films. This new film stars Mckenna Grace (The Haunting of Hill House), Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things, IT), Carrie Coon (Avengers: Infinity War), Paul Rudd (Ant-Man, Mute), Celeste O’Connor (Freaky) and Logan Kim (Home Movie: The Princess Bride), with original film stars Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, and Annie Potts set to reprise their roles in some form or another.
The film was originally set to be released back in the summer of 2020, but because of COVID, Sony opted to delay its slate of films until this year—Afterlife will now debut on November 11th.
