Ghostbusters: Afterlife International Trailer Features More Footage

An international version of the Ghostbusters: Afterlife trailer released Monday includes new footage, showing science-obsessed Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and her friend (newcomer Logan Kim) testing out familiar high-powered ghost-busting equipment. In Afterlife, Phoebe and her family — older brother Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) and single mom Callie (Carrie Coon) — are broke and forced to relocate to Summerville, Oklahoma, where summer school teacher and seismologist Mr. Grooberson (Paul Rudd) becomes aware of the first paranormal happenings in more than 30 years. When a new supernatural threat arises, the world will have to call on a new generation of Ghostbusters to save the day.

The genesis for Afterlife, the direct sequel to Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II, started when writer-director Jason Reitman envisioned a 12-year-old girl sporting a proton pack — the character that eventually took shape as Grace’s science whiz Phoebe.

“I didn’t know who she was, or why she popped into my head, but I saw her with a proton pack and this story began to form. And it formed over many years, actually,” Reitman said during Ghostbusters Fan Fest in June. “It started with a girl, and all of a sudden it was a family.” Eventually, Reitman “knew this movie I needed to write.”

Phoebe, Trevor and Mr. Grooberson just might get a helping hand from the original generation of still-surviving Ghostbusters: Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson) and Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), whose characters were not revealed in the trailer but were previously confirmed to return.

“Jason Reitman wrote a beautiful, heartfelt script that takes the real DNA from the first two movies and transfers that directly to the third, the next generation,” Aykroyd said during a recent appearance on The Greg Hill Show. “It hands the legacy off to a new generation of stars, and players, and actors, and characters.”

He continued, “It was really exciting working around this new idea, a new take on the story which Jason — who’s a really incredible and fine filmmaker — came up with. So I’m pretty excited. You never know in the film business. Nobody knows about anything. ‘Nobody knows nothing,’ as the great writer William Goldman said. Nobody knows anything, you don’t know what’s going to be a hit or not. But I have really good feelings for this, just because of the quality of the stars we’ve got there.”

Also starring Sigourney Weaver, Annie Potts, Celeste O’Connor, and Bokeem Woodbine, Ghostbusters: Afterlife opens July 10, 2020. Follow the author @CameronBonomolo on Twitter.