If busting makes you feel good, then you’re in luck this weekend — Ghostbusters: Afterlife opens in theaters.
It’s directed by Jason Reitman, son of Ivan Reitman, who directed and produced the original films, and his dad couldn’t be more proud.
Jason tells ABC Audio, “I think most parents had this dream that their child will one day want to work with them and pick up what they’ve built over their lifetime. And my father built Ghostbusters, and I think it was his dream that I would one day work in the shop behind the counter.”
The film is also about family — specifically, Egon Spengler’s — which Jason describes as “three generations of a family reckoning with itself as these young kids find a proton pack and Ecto-1. And in uncovering them, figuring out their new adventure, their legacy.”
Jason made it very clear to his dad that he wanted to make his own film, which was fine with Ivan, who encouraged him to make a Ghostbusters for a new generation.
“Anything new, my father was thrilled about,” notes Jason. “Oddly, it was when I would echo the past and lean into the nostalgia that my father’s back would get up and get uncomfortable.”
At the same time, Jason and co-writer Gil Kenan “felt this responsibility to simultaneously look forward, but also give people who have always loved this franchise another moment with characters they love [and] all the equipment…the music, the sound effects, the ghosts…that we’ve been wanting to see again.”
Father and son did have one major disagreement:
“If my father had his druthers, there’d be a lot more slime in this movie, I will say that,” Jason admits. “And I perhaps should have conceded just to make him happy.”
Copyright © 2021, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
