Ghostbusters: Afterlife Star Reacts to Third Delay: “It’ll Be Worth the Wait”

Returning Ghostbusters star Annie Potts is the first cast member to react to the thrice-delayed Ghostbusters: Afterlife, promising the sequel will be “worth the wait.” On Thursday, Sony Pictures shifted the Jason Reitman-directed Ghostbusters 3 from June 11 to November 11 as part of a coronavirus-related reshuffling that moved the studio’s Morbius and Uncharted out of 2021 and into 2022. The burgeoning pandemic previously delayed Afterlife from its original opening on July 10, 2020, bumping it to spring 2021 as part of a first-round of Sony postponements last March.

“Though I’m sad the premiere is delayed, I am however thrilled they are insisting we all need to experience it TOGETHER back in a good ol’ fashion movie theatre. I miss those days,” the Janine Melnitz actor wrote in an Instagram post. “It’ll be worth the wait, I promise! 😘👻 So let’s get vaccinated and stay masked so we can get back to going out and doing the things we love!”

Sony Pictures chief Tony Vinciquerra previously indicated the studio is committed to theatrical releases for its bigger-budgeted films with blockbuster potential. In September, Vinciquerra said Sony wouldn’t “make the mistake of putting a very, very expensive $200 million movie out in the market unless we’re sure that theaters are open and operating at significant capacity.”

In Afterlife, a 30-years-later direct sequel to the 1984 and 1989 films directed by producer Ivan Reitman, Potts reunites with surviving Ghostbusters stars Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, and Sigourney Weaver. The new story centers on single mother Callie (Carrie Coon) and her two children, Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and Trevor (Finn Wolfhard) — the family members of the late Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) — who encounter something strange in their new neighborhood.

“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,” star and producer Akyroyd previously said on The Greg Hill Show. “It hands the legacy off to a new generation of stars, and players, and actors, and characters.”

The long-awaited Ghostbusters 3 from Sony-based Ghost Corps is “gonna be scary, it’s gonna be thought-provoking, it’s gonna be very heartfelt,” Aykroyd added. “You’ll feel it if you have loved ones that you miss and that you’ve lost, and you want to get back with. It’ll be very evocative that way.”

Ghostbusters: Afterlife opens in theaters on November 11.