There are two diverging narratives surrounding Paul Feig’s 2016 Ghostbusters remake. On the one hand, fans of the original films were irrationally upset to see Hollywood give their (suddenly untouchable) films an all-female cast. For them, the film was a deserved flop. On the other hand, countless stories were written about a new generation of female Ghostbusters fans who were thrilled to see the movie reach out to new audiences. These fans believe the movie did more than enough to warrant sequels. And while the box office numbers and critical scores didn’t signal the slam-dunk hit that most fans were looking for, it sounds like the producers side in the second camp, with Ivan Reitman promising earlier this year that he was hard at work weaving together a cohesive universe from the games, movies, and animated films.
Last year’s Ghostbusters reboot was supposed to be the start of an entire new franchise (or perhaps even a universe of franchises) around the venerable ’80s horror comedy. Sony Pictures, which owns the rights to bust ghosts on the big screen, even created this new production company, Ghost Corps, to lead the charge on all these various efforts. There was talk of an all-male Ghostbusters to accompany the all-female team we got from director Paul Feig. And a new cartoon series was put into development as well. But since the movie opened to just so-so reviews and box office last year, developments on this front have been as quiet as Spook Central after a total protonic reversal.