Jason Reitman to Helm New GHOSTBUSTERS

Entertainment Weekly broke the story this week: filmmaker Jason Reitman has been working on a sequel to Ghostbusters.

And not the Ghostbusters that came out in 2016, but the original two starring Dan Ackroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis, and Annie Potts. And while there’s no word yet on whether the surviving members of the cast would return (Ramis passed away in 2014), we do have a teaser that shows one familiar “face”:

Reitman, whose father Ivan directed and produced the first two Ghostbusters films, co-wrote the new story with Gil Kenan. The senior Reitman will also be on board as a producer on the new sequel through his Montecito Pictures shingle. The sequel has been dated by Sony Pictures for a Summer 2020 release date, with shooting to begin in the next few months.

“I’ve always thought of myself as the first Ghostbusters fan, when I was a 6-year-old visiting the set. I wanted to make a movie for all the other fans,” Reitman tells Entertainment Weekly. “This is the next chapter in the original franchise. It is not a reboot. What happened in the ‘80s happened in the ‘80s, and this is set in the present day.”

So, does this mean that Sony is going to ignore the 2016 film? Are they perhaps set in separate universes? The end credit scene in the 2016 picture hinted at the return of Zuul as a villain, but if the Reitman picture ignores the 2016 film completely, all bets are off. No story details have been revealed, of course, so everything is speculation at this point.

According to Variety, the project has been in the works for the past several months under the name Rust City, and that Reitman has been testing teenage actors for four “mystery roles”.

Back in 2016, it was reported that Sony was working on both an animated feature directed by Fletcher Moules, along with a new animated series called Ghostbusters: Ecto Force, but there hasn’t been any movement on either of these projects reported of late.