Ghostbusters’ Netflix Success Proves the Franchise Needs to Pivot
This is how you do it.
The biggest movie on Netflix right now is a major franchise installment that divided critics. While Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire might have quickly faded from public consciousness after its March release, the sequel is technically — when you take the global box office into account — one of the most successful movies of the year. Yet its critical score on Rotten Tomatoes is only 42%, and even its biggest apologists probably know why.
The problem with Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire isn’t that it's a bad movie, but that it doesn’t feel like a movie at all. Now that it’s dominating Netflix, its strengths and weaknesses are clear. Frozen Empire should never have been a film, but rather a pilot for a streaming series. The reason it’s doing well on Netflix is that it feels like it belongs there.
Frozen Empire is a packed film. When you add up the core family of Spenglers, Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), Phoebe (Mckenna Grace), Callie (Carrie Coon) plus Paul Rudd, then combine them with the classic actors — Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts, and Dan Aykroyd — you’re already at eight onscreen Ghostbusters. Then there’s Podcast (Logan Kim) and Lucky (Celeste O'Connor) from Afterlife, who both work with the very crucial exposition-deliverer Lars (James Acaste). Oh, and there’s also Nadeem (Kumail Nanjiani), who’s the heir to a kind of medieval version of the Ghostbusters. So, that’s 12 Ghostbusters jammed into a two-hour movie, and that’s not even counting all the non-Ghostbuster characters.
That’s too many characters for a two-hour movie, but the perfect amount for a TV show with eight or 10 hour-long episodes. Ghostbusters has dabbled in television before; in between classic movies, the 1986 animated TV series expanded the franchise in a way the films never could. While details are still scant, a new animated Ghostbusters series is in the works for Netflix, and the franchise’s most TV-feeling movie is crushing it on the platform. It feels like a big-budget monster of the week episode in a live-action Ghostbusters show that, sadly, doesn’t exist.
The franchise’s future lies in episodic TV, and while it’s unlikely Frozen Empire’s heroes will re-emerge in that medium, it’s a charming adventure for longtime fans as long as you know what you’re getting into. The movie is overstuffed and its pacing is a mess, but there’s serious potential buried under all that ice. Let’s hope Netflix takes notice of it.
