Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) | First Teaser Dropped

Above photo from Toy News International.

A little spontaneous writing for you all today. In the past couple of years, I heard through the grapevine that Jason Reitman was working on a follow-up to his highly successful Ghostbusters sequel, Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021).

I didn’t look too much into it, because for these kinds of things, the less I know, the better. I feel like now, more than ever, too much information is given out about future films, that by the time they come out you already know half of it.

So today, on my lunchbreak, I make my way to YouTube with no real objective, but I quickly found one as my eyes landed on the thumbnail for Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the first teaser. It had just dropped about an hour earlier. Without even skipping a beat, I clicked on it, not knowing at all what to expect. What a rollercoaster of emotions this trailer was. I went from feeling uncertain, to curious, to downright excited!

I feel like a bit of a backstory is needed here. The Ghostbusters franchise has been extremely important to me in my life. The original Ghostbusters (1984) is the first film I remember watching, ever! It’s my earliest movie memory. I remember renting it on videocassette with my family, and catching it every time it came on TV (usually the French-dubbed version).

The “Ghostbusters” title card, as I remember it as a child.

In the late 80s, I would never miss an episode of The Real Ghostbusters. It scared the living daylights out of me, and even kept me from sleeping some nights. I can remember my mother forbidding me to watch it, but I would sneakily find ways to get my Ghostbusters fix. It was an addiction. As much as it scared me, I couldn’t get enough of these characters and these storylines.

Me on my 4th birthday, 1989. Receiving a Ghostbusters Proton Pack, which I thought was real. That’s a story for another time.

Now, I plan to write a more elaborate history of Ghostbusters and my experiences with it next year for the film’s 40th anniversary, but I felt like it was necessary for me to set the stage for you to really understand how important this franchise is to me.

Now we won’t talk about the 2016 reboot, because it never happened (it was all a dream), but in 2019 a teaser dropped for a new DIRECT sequel to the first two films, and it was called Ghostbusters: Afterlife. It was announced that the film would be directed by Jason Reitman, son of Ivan Reitman who had directed both Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II. Ivan would also be serving as producer. To say I was excited would be an understatement. The fact that they were keeping it in the family, so to speak, gave me confidence in the project. Sadly, while the film was in production, COVID happened, and caused delay, after delay, after delay.

Finally in November of 2021, the film was released theatrically. Unfortunately I missed it in theaters, but I bought the blu-ray the day it came out on February 1st, 2022.

Happy camper. Me parked outside of Wal-Mart the morning “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” came out, February 1st, 2022.

I won’t go too much into detail, as this is not a review of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, but I will say that it exceeded all of my expectations, and I was very pleased with the film. VERY pleased.

When they announced a sequel to Afterlife, my immediate thought was: “But how could a sequel match up to it?“. Seeing the first teaser today gave me hope, and as I said previously, built up my curiosity and excitement. The film won’t be directed by Jason Reitman, but he will be producing while Gil Kenan will be in the director’s chair.

This turned out to be much longer than I had planned, so without any further delay, here is the brand new teaser for you to check out for yourselves. Feel free to share your thoughts on it, or of the Ghostbusters Franchise in general. Cheers!

And for my French-speaking brothers and sisters:

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is set for release on March 22, 2024.

Directed By Gil Kenan

Written By Jason Reitman & Gil Kenan

Starring Mckenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard, Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Annie Potts and Patton Oswalt