'Ghostbusters 2020' plot: Ivan Reitman teases Earth-shattering spoilers

If there’s something strange in your neighborhood, you call the Ghostbusters. But when there’s earthquakes, well, you can call them too.

At the opening of the Ghostbusters Maze at Universal Studios’ Hollywood Horror Nights, original director Ivan Reitman revealed a little bit about Paul Rudd’s new character in the upcoming 2020 sequel to the original movies. Instead of being a hack paranormal expert, or just an everyday guy like Zeddemore, Rudd’s still unnamed character is a seismologist who winds up a summer school teacher when the ghosts run amok.

“Well, he’s a seismologist who’s come to this small town because they’ve been having mysterious earthquakes,” Reitman told Entertainment Tonight. “He’s also teaching summer school there. And he’s extraordinarily funny.”

So little is known about the third canonical film, which Dan Aykroyd told Joe Rogan might just be titled Ghostbusters and not its current internet title of Ghostbusters 2020, that even Reitman’s teeny bit of information (summer school! earthquakes!) feels, well, Earth-shattering.

Based on what we know about the film, Ghostbusters (2020) will feature the original Ghostbusters passing their Proton Packs down to a new generation.

That new generation includes Rudd, Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things) and Mckenna Grace (Annabelle Comes Home), who play siblings with a single mother, played by Carrie Coon (The Leftovers). Returning cast members include Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, and Annie Potts who reprise their characters from the original films.

It will also take place outside of New York City, which is where the last three Ghostbusters films were set. Since July, production has taken place in and around Calgary, Alberta in Canada.

At the opening of the Ghostbusters Maze, Aykroyd told Entertainment Weekly that he is working on getting Bill Murray, who famously played Peter Venkman, to again reprise his role for the third film.

“It feeds it beautifully into the first two stoires and hands it off to a new generation,” said Aykroyd of the new movie.

Due in theaters July 10, 2020, Ghostbusters, or Ghostbusters 3 or Ghostbusters 2020, is currently in production with director Jason Reitman, son of Ivan Reitman. The film takes place in the same continuity of the first two films and not the 2016 reboot, which starred an all-female cast including Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, Kristen Wiig, and Melissa McCarthy. (Original cast members Aykroyd, Hudson, and Murray also appeared in that film via cameos.)

Before even filming began, a “trailer” was released that showed the original Ecto-1 hearse abandoned in a farm barn before turning on.

Ghostbusters 2020 will be released in theaters on July 10, 2020.