On November 19, Ghostbusters: Afterlife arrives in theaters. Who ya gonna call?
Better yet... Who ya gonna get your tickets from?
Tickets for Ghostbusters: Afterlife are now on sale here at Fandango, and to celebrate we're debuting a brand new clip from the film alongside an exclusive conversation with co-writer and director, Jason Reitman.
For Reitman, it's as if he's been preparing for this moment since he was six years old. That's when his father, Ivan Reitman, was busy directing the very first Ghostbusters film. Little did anyone know back then, but Reitman's 1984 film would go on to become one of the most beloved action-comedies of all-time. Now, almost 40 years later, Ivan's son, Jason, is picking up the proton pack and continuing his family's legacy. He's doing it with a film that introduces a new, younger cast of Ghostbusters, while also reuniting much of the original 1984 cast, all reprising their roles for the first time since 1989's Ghostbusters II.
"I remember being six years old on the set of Ghostbusters," Jason Reitman recalled when we asked for his earliest memory of Ghostbusters being in his life. "I remember the rooftop set of Dana's apartment building. I remember the day they dropped marshmallow on William Atherton. I remember seeing the guys in their flight suits in New York City. Oh, you know what? I remember the special effects test for the card catalog shot in the library where the cards go flipping out of the drawer in pre-production -- and they did it, and I said, "Can you do that again?" And the effects guy was like, "Yeah, sure, kid, pick them up."
Ahead, Reitman talks about combining the old and the new in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, a film it feels he was always destined to make.
Fandango: Would you consider this film to be the third part of a trilogy or the first film in a new era of Ghostbusters storytelling? Or is it both?
Jason Reitman: It's a great question. What we've always said is that this is the next chapter in the original mythology of Ghostbusters. A mythology that began when my father made the original Ghostbusters in 1984, that I was on set for and I grew up with and never quite had the courage to pick up the proton pack myself, until Gil Kenan and I started chewing on this script idea and I pitched to my father and he gave me that push. It was kind of the same push that my father gave me when he taught me to ride a bike.
Fandango: Continuing one's family legacy is a strong theme throughout Ghostbusters. Dan Aykroyd was continuing his own family's legacy in studying paranormal and the occult when he wrote the original draft of that first film. You're continuing the legacy by picking up a baton from your father and writing and directing this new one. And then the kids in the film are continuing their family's legacies. Why was it important for you to continue your family's legacy, but then also fold that theme into the film itself too?
Jason Reitman: I mean, you're so right. I don't think it's an accident that I'm a son of a Ghostbuster, making a movie about the children of Ghostbusters. This is a movie that is looking forward and looking to the past at the same time. It's a film about nostalgia. And it's a film about what it would be like if you went through your grandparents' basement, dusting off some old boxes, and what if you found a proton pack inside there? What if you found the keys to Ecto-1? What would that say about who you were and the adventure you were about to go on?
Fandango: The original Ghostbusters cast were a group of comedians at the height of their careers. Paul Feig's movie did something similar with its female ensemble. But for this, you cast a group of kids as the leads. Why did it make sense to put a group of kids at the center of this story?
Jason Reitman: The first idea that ever popped into my head was a 12-year-old girl in a field with a proton pack. I didn't know who she was. And then I saw this teenage guy who finds the keys to Ecto-1 and takes it drifting through a wheat field. I didn't know who he was. And in 2014, when Harold Ramis passed, I suddenly knew who they were. They were Spenglers. And that is one of those moments where I thought, you know, I may need to tell this story.
Fandango: Speaking of Spenglers, we're debuting a new scene from the film, along with this interview, featuring Paul Rudd, McKenna Grace and Logan Kim's characters trying to get a trap to work. And it's a pivotal moment because Mckenna's character comes to a major realization. So do you want to talk about the importance of that scene, because it feels like it really is the essence of the film itself. It's got humor, it's got traps, it's got a ghost and it has this kid coming to a realization about who she is and where she comes from.
Jason Reitman: We wanted this film to be about rediscovery. And we wanted this to be a film in which we handed Ghostbusters to the audience, prop by prop, music cue by music cue, character by character. First, we hand you the P.K.E. meter, then the trap, then the proton pack. And when Gil Kenan and I were writing, we thought, you know, when you hit the pedal and the trap opens, we know it can pull a ghost in, but could a ghost also pop out that way? And we wanted to see that scene. A legacy is handed to the young people in this film and they need to figure out what it is and why it's been handed to them. And in this scene, they get a big piece of the puzzle. What emerges from the trap should be familiar to anyone who loves Ghostbusters.
Fandango: Logan Kim as Podcast is a major scene stealer in this movie, and in this scene, too. This kid's never been in a film before, so where did you discover him?
Jason Reitman: It's amazing, right? It's a daunting task to put people in the flight suit and you need to find people who are funny, dramatic and are ready to be at the center of a big popcorn movie. And of course, McKenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard should not be strangers to anyone at this point. They're just uber talented and big stars. But we found new stars in Logan Kim and Celeste O'Connor. Logan Kim had basically been in one industrial ad for FedEx and had never done anything otherwise. He turned in his tape and there was no one who came close. I mean, Logan Kim feels like he would've been cast on Saturday Night Live if they were casting it, if it was 1975 today. He's just this incredible raw talent, physical comedian, who showed up on set like it was his 30th movie.
Fandango: You do bring back some of the original Ghostbusters in this film. We won't spoil how or why they come back, but I'd love to ask you what that journey was like. For example, when they were making the original Ghostbusters, no one even knew if Bill Murray was going to show up on the first day of shooting.
Jason Reitman: [laughs] Yeah.
Fandango: So, I was just curious, what was your pitch to Bill like for this? And were you also worried whether he would show up?
Jason Reitman: I'd certainly heard the stories of whether or not Bill would show up, but he read the script and he loved it. That was my pitch. My pitch was our story, and I was never going to do this movie unless everyone said yes. I was not going to do the movie without the original team and without Annie [Potts]. And it was overwhelming when they arrived on set. It's like seeing the Beatles back together, seeing the original guys stand next to each other. And it was moving for me. It was moving for the cast. It was moving for an actor like Paul Rudd who grew up loving Ghostbusters and just as extraordinary for McKenna Grace, who was born years after the original came out, but had been a Ghostbuster multiple times for Halloween.
Fandango: You know, Dan Aykroyd has a ton of ideas. He always has ideas on how to move the Ghostbusters story forward. How much collaborating did you do with him on this film?
Jason Reitman: It's an amazing thing to speak to Dan Aykroyd because you really are speaking to Ray Stantz. And when he starts talking about spirituality and the occult and the unknown, he speaks in that language that only Dan Aykroyd does and you want to scribble down everything he says and put it in the script.
Fandango: You have a brief cameo in the original Ghostbusters that was cut, but you put it back into this movie. So, how did that decision come about to put that cameo back into this movie? And since you had a cameo in the original film, directed by your father, does your daughter have a cameo in this film?
Jason Reitman: In 1983, while shooting Ghostbusters, my father attempted to put my mother, my sister and I into the film. Only apparently, I was being a brat that day -- hard to believe, but perhaps -- and we only got a couple takes off and he never put in the footage. One might say that the only reason I made this film was to uncover that footage and put it back in its rightful place in the Ghostbusters mythology. But honestly, it was so cool to actually see it because I have these vague memories of shooting that scene. And when we went into the dailies to scan all kinds of things, old 65-millimeter cloud tank footage and other little clips that appear in this movie, they were able to find these two takes and we were able to put it in. And yes, my daughter does have a brief moment in the movie. It's another lovely Easter egg.
