Prepare to be slimed! The universe of the Ghostbusters will not end with the 2016 reboot film. Ivan Reitman, the director of the original film, says a shared Ghostbusters cinematic universe is coming, starting with a new animated film.
Speaking to io9 yesterday, Reitman mentioned that he was “disappointed” in the box office performance of the Paul Feig-directed 2016 Ghostbusters. “I think the film cost too much, frankly, and that’s the real issue,” he said.
The solution, it seems, is the much-discussed animated film. “We jumped into an animated film,” Reitman said, before teasing a total shared universe. “I want to bring all these stories together as a universe that makes sense within itself.”
While there is no release date for the new animated film yet, Reitman hopes it will be out around 2019 or 2020. Ghostbusters once saw life as an animated children’s series called The Real Ghostbusters, which ran from 1986 to 1991.
The continuity of that show and the original films was briefly reconciled in the episode “Take Two” in which its revealed that a big budget movie was made about the exploits of the Ghostbusters. Footage from the 1984 film was even incorporated into the episode for added “realism.”
At this point, it’s unclear how Reitman would combine the continuity of the 2016 Paul Feig film with the original two films since the former seemed to take place in a completely different world, one in which no one had heard of the Ghostbusters. Still, because other dimensions are totally allowed in the Ghostbusters, anything could happen. This is particularly true of an animated film, a medium where ages of the surviving original actors wouldn’t be an issue. The current, ongoing IDW comic book series — Ghostbusters 101 — sees Venkman from the original film teaming up with Holzman from the new film, making a similar idea an interesting prospect for an animated film that unites the ‘Busters canon.
