Ghostbusters: Ernie Hudson Has an Idea for a Winston Spin-Off Series

After decades away from the proton pack, Ernie Hudson has plenty of ideas for a returned Winston Zeddemore.

By Russ Burlingame

Forty years after he first joined the Ghostbusters, Ernie Hudson still has plenty of energy left for the franchise. To celebrate the release of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the star spoke with ComicBook and gave us a pretty thoughtful pitch for what he would do, if he had to tell a stand-alone story for Winston Zeddemore, the character he first introduced in the classic 1984 comedy Ghostbusters. The star, who famously got snubbed in much of the first movie, has turned into a fully-realized character in the 2020s, owning a company that finances much of the Ghostbusters' research and helping them navigate tricky legal and regulatory challenges.

Some of the roots for what Hudson would want to do are already in place, with the star saying that he would want Winston's story to continue a theme brought up in the new film: an exploration of what all these ghosts mean, what they want, and whether all of them really even need to be busted.

"It kind of happens in Frozen Empire, he has his research center," Hudson told ComicBook. "He's trying to figure out, what's this all about? Who are these ghosts? Do we bust them all the same? Are all the ghosts deserve to be trapped/ Are we here to help them transition? How do they impact our lives? So suddenly you start to see a whole section of the city start to get violent, maybe they're being influenced. My grandmother, who believed in ghosts, she felt that ghosts can't move furniture, but they can move your emotions around, and when you start getting these thoughts about stuff, that's coming from someplace, and maybe that's the influence. And if you can eliminate those bad ghosts, then maybe you break that cycle. We're treating people from a physical standpoint, maybe there's something else goign on supernatural that's influencing. So it's not just what happens in the ghost world, but how the ghost world is throwing off [the physical world]. We did a little bit of it in the second movie, with the slime, where suddenly the whole town was out of control."

Hudson explained that he would like to see a story where "Ghosts definitely affect our thoughts, our feelings, our suspicions. The Bible talks about ghost spirits are like messengers: they bring these ideas to us, and they feed us, and suddenly you become possessed with this idea of your girlfriend cheating or something. Where's that coming from? That's not something that you're necessarily doing, but you're allowing in. So I would love to see Winston trap this series of ghosts that people can't see, but we have the equipment, we know they're there, and suddenly a town is sort of freed up. Suddenly the mass murderer decides to no longer have interest in it."

In Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the Spengler family returns to where it all started – the iconic New York City firehouse – to team up with the original Ghostbusters, who've developed a top-secret research lab to take busting ghosts to the next level. But when the discovery of an ancient artifact unleashes an evil force, Ghostbusters new and old must join forces to protect their home and save the world from a second Ice Age.

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Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire stars Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Logan Kim, Kumail Nanjiani, Patton Oswalt, Celeste O'Connor, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Bill Murray, Annie Potts, James Acaster, and Emily Alyn Lind. 

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is now available to rent or own on Digital.

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