The first full trailer for Ghostbusters: Afterlife confirms suspicions the central family of new characters are related to late founding Ghostbuster Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis). In the sequel to 1984’s Ghostbusters and 1989’s Ghostbusters II, broke single mom Callie (Carrie Coon) and her two children — science whiz Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and gearhead Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) — move to the sleepy town of Summerville, Oklahoma, where they’ve inherited a “creepy old farmhouse” handed down from Callie’s father. There they discover technology developed by Egon and Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) — including the PKE meter, a ghost trap, proton pack and a rusted Ecto-1 — and, soon, a connection to the original Ghostbusters, including the still-surviving Ray, Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) and Peter Venkman (Bill Murray).
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In the trailer, we see an odd assortment — labels read “Cladosporin,” “Microconidia,” “Penicillium Sinus,” and other not easily pronounced names — revealing Egon’s famously talked about collection of spores, molds and funguses. A dusty room shows off a collection of forgotten-about equipment, including a resting proton pack, and we then see Phoebe discover a uniform with a patch reading “SPENGLER.”
The connection to Egon was suspected, but never confirmed, starting with the first officially released photo from the set of what was then called Ghostbusters 2020. Because Grace’s character resembled Egon — she wears familiar-looking glasses — it was determined the then-unnamed family were descendants of Egon.
After confirming the return of the original Ghostbusters cast, star and producer Aykroyd revealed Afterlife will pay tribute to Ramis, who died in 2014.
“I miss him a lot. He was, of course, a really intelligent, great writer and collaborator,” Aykroyd said on The Greg Hill Show in November. “We paid tribute to him in the movie that Paul Feig made with the girls, he was there in a bust, and Billy and I showed up to work on that because we had faith on that vision.”
He continued, “So we paid tribute to Harold there, and of course, we’ll recognize him in this film in some way, however small.”
Afterlife was made from a “beautiful” and “heartfelt” script penned by director Jason Reitman and Monster House‘s Gil Kenan, and the new movie “takes the real DNA from the first two movies and transfers that directly to the third, the next generation,” Aykroyd said, handing the legacy off “to a new generation of stars, and players, and actors, and characters.”
The long-awaited sequel also promises to be “scary” and “it’s gonna be thought-provoking, it’s gonna be very heartfelt.”
“You’ll feel it, if you have loved ones that you miss and that you’ve lost, and you want to get back with,” Aykroyd added. “It’ll be very evocative that way.”
Ghostbusters: Afterlife releases July 10, 2020. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.
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