We live in a time where nothing is new and nothing ever dies. The Marvel Cinematic Universe will continue to more or less make the same three movies until the oceans swallow our cities. Star Wars movies and spinoffs and TV shows and animated series and video games will still be produced by whichever species of artificial intelligence that inherits the Earth long after humanity destroys itself. Someone will play a new Joker every six months until the franchise has dozens of intersecting parallel universes that can only be deciphered by Method Actor Jared Leto's great-great-grandchildren.
The future of big budget Hollywood blockbusters looks frighteningly familiar. And now, a new rebooted franchise enters the fray, as Sony has announced a new Ghostbusters movie due out in 2020. Now, you may be thinking, Is this a sequel to the Paul Feig-directed 2016 Ghostbusters starring Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones? The one that made grown adult men cry because it ruined their childhood? Reader, it is not.
No, this is another Ghostbusters movie, one that is set in the same world as the 1984 original. Ghostbusters 2020, we'll call it, will be directed by Jason Reitman—the son of Ivan Reitman, who directed the original—because busting ghosts is a family business and all.
“This is the next chapter in the original franchise. It is not a reboot. What happened in the ‘80s happened in the ‘80s, and this is set in the present day," Reitman told Entertainment Weekly of the reboot.
Now, keep in mind, like those Joker films in the works, this new Ghostbusters is unconnected to Feig's Ghostbusters 2016, we'll call it.
“I have so much respect for what Paul created with those brilliant actresses, and would love to see more stories from them. However, this new movie will follow the trajectory of the original film,” Reitman told EW.
If all of this sounds familiar—which it absolutely does!—it might be because something similar actually happened in the '80s, when there were two (2!) Ghostbusters cartoons in the works. One these cartoons was based off the movie, and the other was based on a '70s TV show independent from the film.
But, this also sounds very similar to how Disney built up the Marvel and Star Wars cinematic universes. EW also reports that there is an animated Ghostbusters film in the works that will come out after Reitman's reboot.
“The Ghostbusters universe is big enough to hold a lot of different stories,” Reitman told EW, which certainly sounds like Sony is in the early phases of creating a Ghostbusters Cinematic Universe.
Let's at least hope this fares better than Universal's monster universe, which was canceled after Tom Cruise's disastrous Mummy movie.
Matt Miller is a Brooklyn-based culture/lifestyle writer and music critic whose work has appeared in Esquire, Forbes, The Denver Post, and documentaries.
