Ghostbusters Reboot Director Paul Feig Reacts To Ghostbusters: Afterlife Trailer

Yesterday saw the release of the first official trailer for Ghostbusters: Afterlife from Sony Pictures, revealing a first look at the new film in the series which does a hard pivot from the 2016 reboot, Ghostbusters: Answer the Call. The trailer firmly cements the new movie as a sequel to the original movies, going as far as to have a character drop the line “There hasn’t been a ghost sighting in thirty years.” Though it was obvious at the time the 2016 movie was set in its own universe, the upcoming “Afterlife” has made it clear that, for lack of a better term, the reboot isn’t canon here. Despite these implications, Paul Feig, the director of the 2016 Ghostbusters, took to Twitter to heap praise on the new film and its director.

“This looks so awesome,” Feig wrote. “Huge congrats to @JasonReitman and his amazing cast and crew. I cannot WAIT to see this!” You can read the full message from the director below.

Feig previously showed support for the upcoming film after director Jason Reitman was quoted saying something many interpreted as a dig on Feig’s movie. The 2016 feature film starred Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, and Chris Hemsworth, with cameos from the original stars (much like the upcoming movie). Despite grossing over $229.1 million at the worldwide box office, the film was considered a failure due to the massive production and marketing budget.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife focuses on a family, played by genre veterans Carrie Coon, McKenna Grace, and Finn Wolfhard. In the movie, the trio are forced to move to a family home in a small town where a connection to the original Ghostbusters team and the secret legacy hidden there by the children’s grandfather (implied by the trailer to be Harold Ramis’ Egon Spengler).

The surviving original Ghostbusters — Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Ernie Hudson — will return for the film with Annie Potts and Sigourney Weaver will also reprise their roles from the original films. Paul Rudd also appears in the new movie.

What Reitman has planned this time around is more of a “love letter” to the fans and his father’s films, including reports that he will use discarded footage from the earlier films in order to build a more direct bridge to the sequel — an approach that is also becoming more popular, with films like Cars 3 and Bill & Ted Face the Music using it to provide closure on characters played by actors who passed away between installments of the series.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife is scheduled to hit theaters on July 10, 2020.