Netflix’s Ghostbusters Animated Series in Development With Original Star

Despite the original Ghostbusters turning the franchise into a pop culture staple, studios have struggled to build the brand. The original 1984 film was a critical success and grossed nearly $300 million at the box office, but every subsequent theatrical attempt has failed to replicate that standard. Ghostbusters II had a lukewarm reception, the 2016 all-female reboot became a commercial disaster, and the legacy sequels Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire fared no better with critics, with the latter failing to break even on its $100 million production budget. Throughout all of this turbulence, the brightest chapter in the franchise has arguably been The Real Ghostbusters, the beloved animated series that ran from 1986 to 1991. Now, Netflix and Sony Pictures Animation are returning to that format, with a new animated series gaining significant momentum ahead of this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival.

Dan Aykroyd, who co-wrote and starred in the original film, has officially boarded Netflix’s upcoming Ghostbusters animated series as an executive producer, with Netflix revealing the news as part of its Annecy 2026 lineup. The series is described as “based on the beloved Ghostbusters IP” and is scheduled to debut on Netflix in 2027. While little is known about the project, Netflix has already established that the series is being produced by Flying Bark Productions and blends horror, comedy, sci-fi, and fantasy. “We are doing a really neat animated Ghostbusters,” Aykroyd previously said of the project. “The characters and the whole take and the look of Manhattan is really exciting. So, I think maybe there’s an opportunity there for those writers to address some of the issues that we need to heal and move on with our lives.”

Animation Is the Best Medium for Ghostbusters

The series is not the only project in the new Ghostbusters pipeline, as there is an animated movie in the works. Taken together, these two projects represent the best long-term plan the property has seen since the original duology concluded in 1989. At its core, the property is a deliberately absurdist comedy about blue-collar workers navigating a supernatural bureaucracy filled with ghosts that are colorful and deeply weird. Furthermore, Ghostbusters treat the afterlife as a nuisance to be invoiced and contained, and even supposedly world-threatening villains are faced with an absurdist edge. That tone is extraordinarily difficult to execute in live action at blockbuster scale, because the financial pressure of a major theatrical release inevitably pushes productions toward spectacle over character. 

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The Real Ghostbusters understood this dynamic from its very first episode. Without the constraint of a nine-figure production budget, the series leaned entirely into the property’s comedic sensibility, built inventive ghost designs week after week, and gave its characters room to develop. It’s no wonder that the show ran for 140 episodes and remains the informal standard against which every subsequent Ghostbusters project has been measured. The franchise has failed to recreate the tone of the first movie in theaters, so maybe the flexibility of animation, combined with reduced financial stakes, can finally allow Ghostbusters to thrive in the 21st century.

The Ghostbusters animated series is scheduled to debut on Netflix in 2027.

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