Movie buffs looking to get ahead of the game always keep a close eye on the annual CinemaCon – the industry event that acts as the perfect stage for the major studios to reveal their release roadmap for the second half of the calendar year.
The 2022 edition was no exception, with trailers for upcoming releases such as Avatar 2, The Woman King, and Amsterdam with its literal all-star cast including Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, Robert De Niro, and Anya Taylor-Joy capturing much of the attention.
But there was no shortage of interest in the revelation from Sony Pictures that a new Ghostbusters movie is in the works too. Fresh from the success of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which was critically lauded and enjoyed a solid box office return, the studio used CinemaCon as a chance to exclusively break the news.
Unfortunately, they didn’t go into any great detail, and so we have no idea of the movie’s premise or its starring cast, although a working title – the imaginative Ghostbusters 5 – has been revealed. Ghostbusters: Afterlife introduced a different demographic of fans to the franchise, and so perhaps that will once again be the jump-off point for the new release, which you can expect in cinemas at some point in 2023.
Timeless classic
It’s nearly, whisper it, 40 years since they released the original Ghostbusters movie to much acclaim in 1984. That ended up grossing nearly $300 million at the box office to make it one of the most successful comedy movies in history, spawning several sequels and enabling the brand to take on a life of its own.
In 1986, an animated series for TV, The Real Ghostbusters, was made and ran for five years, while Extreme Ghostbusters, which aired for the first time in 1997, was another animated project that created the blueprint for the Afterlife movie and its slightly younger cast.
There have been nearly 20 Ghostbusters video games made over the years. The first was a tie-in with the original movie release and was developed for gaming systems like the Commodore 64 and Atari. It was revealed in March that a new title, featuring original cast members Dan Aykroyd and Ernest Hudson, will be released on the major consoles in 2022, while players can continue to enjoy related content like the Ghostbusters slot game, which can be played at NJ online casinos like Unibet. As ever, the emphasis here is on catching ghosts and ghouls, although real cash prizes are up for grabs.
The Ghostbusters branding can be seen in stacks of other merchandise ranges too, including the ever-popular original logo t-shirt, board games, action figures, a comic book series, and even live shows at Universal Studios.
So the legacy of the Ghostbusters name lives on, and while there are plenty of different ways to enjoy the adventures of the plucky spectral investigators, the most beloved remains on the silver screen. What will Ghostbusters 5 bring to the table?
