The Ghostbusters franchise has continued to be popular since the original film debuted in 1984, despite the fact that it has been dormant for the majority of that time. The franchise delivered two movies in the ‘80s, but fans spent years hoping to see a Ghostbusters 3 materialize that never really happened. While it’s been often reported that Bill Murray holding out on Ghostbusters 3 was one of the big reasons it never happened, it appears he wasn’t the only one.
Jason Reitman, the writer and director of the two recent Ghostbusters movies, and the son of original franchise director Ivan Reitman, recently revealed that his dad had little love for the concept of sequels in general, which also led to one of the strangest parts of the entire franchise: the one time he did actually make a sequel.
Ghostbusters Director Ivan Reitman Hated Sequels
Jason Reitman recently appeared on the Blocks Podcast with Neil Brennan, where he talked over his entire film career. In discussing Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Reitman the younger revealed that his dad didn’t understand why so many movie fans wanted to go backward. Apparently Ivan Reitman was a fan of the more original ideas introduced in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, but less so of the parts that specifically dealt with plot points from the original movie. Reitman said…
My dad never understood sequels. My dad was like, ‘I don’t know why people want to return to this stuff.’ When I wrote Afterlife, and you meet this girl, and she, like, goes out to Oklahoma, and she finds a proton pack, and my dad’s like, ‘This is great.’ And then terror dogs showed up, which is the same thing as ’84, and he’s like, ‘Why Gozer? Why do we need to go back?’ He’s just like, ‘Can I just have a new story?’ I think it’s one of the reasons the Ghostbusters franchise didn’t flourish, like, consistently over decades is cause my dad, after Ghostbusters was like, ‘I’m gonna go do Twins. I don’t care.’He made Ghostbusters II and then there’s nothing for years.
It’s easy to see that Ivan Reitman didn’t love sequels. Ghostbusters II is the only one he ever directed. He also once told our own ReelBlend podcast that he wouldn’t have directed Ghostbusters 3 if the movie had ever happened. While another popular Reitman movie, the aforementioned Twins, has had fans hoping for a sequel for decades, the closest the director ever got was making Junior, another comedy that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito, but with a completely original story, which sounds exactly like the sort of thing Jason Reitman is talking about.
The Ghostbusters II Logo Appearing In The Film Was “Probably A Mistake”
It’s fine to say that Ivan Reitman didn’t like sequels, but there is also evidence that proves that point unequivocally. One of the strangest things in Ghostbusters II is the fact that the logo on the side of the Ghostbusters car is actually the movie’s logo, a point that makes zero sense within the context of the film. It turns out Jason Reitman once asked his dad about that, and the answer indicates how little thought he gave it at the time…
This is how much my dad cared about sequels: on the Ghostbusters car in Ghostbusters II, it has the [Ghostbusters II logo]. That doesn’t make any sense. I asked him years later, I was like, ‘Why does the Ghostbusters movie logo for the sequel appear on Ecto-1? Are they aware that they’re in a sequel? Is that why they have the Ghostbusters ghost with a two on the side of their physical car?’ My dad was like, ‘Yeah, that was probably a mistake.
Ivan Reitman may not have loved sequels, but it seems Jason Reitman has no problem with them. While there is no indication yet if we will see a sequel to Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, a third Ghostbusters film in this era of the franchise seems much more likely to happen now than it ever did in the ‘80s.