Discuss Ghostbusters: Afterlife, released on November 19, 2021 and directed by Jason Reitman.
By Photon Guy
#4968301
Now this is just my opinion of course so anybody reading this feel free to agree or disagree with it, but if you ask me Afterlife succeeded where Disney failed with Star Wars.
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By Chicken, He Clucked
#4968309
I’d be a lot more comfortable of it’s success if we got an end of promo cycle announcement like “GBA made over $200m, surpassed expectations, plenty more in store in future” kind of thing.

I don’t know if the quietness is because the level of success didn’t quite meeting Sony’s expectations? Or Ivan’s passing understandably putting Ghost Corp on a period of time out and reflection? Or if Jason and Gil are busy planning what other projects go ahead.

However as I’ve said in other threads my gut instinct is we get an Afterlife sequel in 2024. However I don’t think Afterlife will be the only strand going forward.
By Photon Guy
#4968333
In Afterlife we get to see the original gang, Peter, Ray, Winston, and even Egon back together. Just like in the good old days when the first two Ghostbusters movies came out. And they did a very beautiful sendoff to the late Harold Ramis.

Now with the new Star Wars movies, lots of fans were hoping to see Luke, Han, Leia and Chewie back together in action and there was tons of disappointment when we didn't get to see that. We get to see that in Ghostbuster Afterlife but we don't get to see that in the Disney Star Wars movies. Disney has really disappointed me. Thumbs up to Afterlife, thumbs down to the Disney Star Wars movies.
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By WCat2000
#4968420
Ya they’ll announce the follow up when it’s a good time. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s already being worked on. I personally never doubted a part 3 would eventually happen but I’m sure it won’t take that long again. Haha.
By Clifton Sleigh
#4968510
Chicken, He Clucked wrote: March 25th, 2022, 4:37 am I’d be a lot more comfortable of it’s success if we got an end of promo cycle announcement like “GBA made over $200m, surpassed expectations, plenty more in store in future” kind of thing.

I don’t know if the quietness is because the level of success didn’t quite meeting Sony’s expectations? Or Ivan’s passing understandably putting Ghost Corp on a period of time out and reflection? Or if Jason and Gil are busy planning what other projects go ahead.

However as I’ve said in other threads my gut instinct is we get an Afterlife sequel in 2024. However I don’t think Afterlife will be the only strand going forward.
My feeling on this? I don't think that there will be a sequel with the current cast (Mckenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard, Celeste O'Connor, Logan Kim) as there is no guarantee of them coming back for a sequel, or that Columbia and Ghost Corps can get them back for one. If what I've just said happens, then Columbia and Ghost Corps will have to create new characters for a future movie.
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By WCat2000
#4968512
Clifton Sleigh wrote: April 1st, 2022, 8:39 pm
Chicken, He Clucked wrote: March 25th, 2022, 4:37 am I’d be a lot more comfortable of it’s success if we got an end of promo cycle announcement like “GBA made over $200m, surpassed expectations, plenty more in store in future” kind of thing.

I don’t know if the quietness is because the level of success didn’t quite meeting Sony’s expectations? Or Ivan’s passing understandably putting Ghost Corp on a period of time out and reflection? Or if Jason and Gil are busy planning what other projects go ahead.

However as I’ve said in other threads my gut instinct is we get an Afterlife sequel in 2024. However I don’t think Afterlife will be the only strand going forward.
My feeling on this? I don't think that there will be a sequel with the current cast (Mckenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard, Celeste O'Connor, Logan Kim) as there is no guarantee of them coming back for a sequel, or that Columbia and Ghost Corps can get them back for one. If what I've just said happens, then Columbia and Ghost Corps will have to create new characters for a future movie.
I agree Celeste O’Connor is questionable because she was not as prominent and we don’t know how into it she is. Logan Kim seems to be into it but it would have to be specifically written to include either of them.

I think Finn Wolfhard would return since Trevor is also Egon’s grandson and McKenna Grace loves GB. I’m positive she would return. I don’t know what makes you think she wouldn’t or they couldn’t get her back. Unless you mean as a group.

I’ll be very upset if they introduce a whole new team who work for Winston and Ray. The game is fine but it’d be so weird if the next movie side steps Afterlife.
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By Chicken, He Clucked
#4968513
A continuity sequel needs to feature Phoebe and Podcast. They're the breakout successes from Afterlife. Plus Phoebe's character is, strangely, the major through-line between the originals and the new movie, moreso than Ray or Winston even.

McKenna and Logan are stars in the making so signing either up for future sequels would be a huge get. I thought Celeste was underrated as Lucky, she has the comedy chops to deliver way more in a sequel, plus they already set up her character arc as wanting to move away from Summerville. Finn was good overall but didn't quite land his comic delivery, I dunno what the deal was there because he was hilarious in IT. He worked best when he was desperately trying to impress Lucky. It'd be interested to see what was left on the cutting room floor with those two.

I guess it depends if the actors want to come back, if the team can do more with these characters in a sequel, or if they choose to refresh the cast with new characters who could prove to be as strong as Phoebe and Podcast.
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By zeta otaku
#4968518
Yeah, I can't a sequel without at LEAST Phoebe coming back from the Summerville events. There are plenty of ways to get them to New York. The one I'm big on is have the Spenglers move to NYC on Winston's bill (call it guilt over losing touch with Egon etc), Lucky is there to look at colleges and Podcast tags along because... well, Podcast and his parents of questionable existence XD

What I DON'T want is a throw back to GB2. For a 4th installment in this timeline, we need something fresh and new. No rivers of slime, no Vigo, nothing like that. I'd love to see Oscar again, maybe as part of a new crew Winston is putting together. I also don't want to see another world destroyer. Keep the threat BIG, but not another apocalypse.

I have several ideas for plots, but I don't think this thread is the place to really discuss such things
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By RichardLess
#4968524
Was Afterlife a success?

Afterlife failed to make more than the previous film

Afterlife failed to get better critical reviews than the previous film

It failed as a comedy

It failed at being scary

It failed at leaving any lasting impression positive or negative on the cultural zeitgeist. This was a movie that came out and was pretty quickly forgotten about. Granted that’s true of most movies & TV shows nowadays where things happen and then we move on rather quickly.

What did it succeed at?

Fans seems to like it. They didn’t over do the CGI and effects. It seems to have been a hit on home video. It opened to ok numbers considering the pandemic

So I guess it all depends on what you mean by “success”. I don’t think it made its money back for Sony in theatres, but maybe the home video and ancillary stuff help push it.

Here’s the best way to judge if it was a success: Did you like it? It doesn’t matter how much money it made or any of that window dressing, what matters is if it entertained you and did what it was suppose to.
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By WCat2000
#4968530
Someone on another board mentioned before the release that it’d be sad if after all this time only Egon had a family. I agree. I like to think Ray at least got married but I hope they give him at least 1 kid as well as Winston. Whether or not they join the business.

I don’t really care about Oscar becoming a GB. It’d be neat but Bill Murray never wanted to do this again. I know Oscar would have his own life by now but Peter never appearing with him (as a father, not a GB) would be really weird.

Does anyone think Bill would agree to play Peter even without suiting up? I don’t.
By Davideverona
#4968531
mrmichaelt wrote: April 3rd, 2022, 12:08 am
zeta otaku wrote: April 2nd, 2022, 12:59 pm I'd love to see Oscar again, maybe as part of a new crew Winston is putting together.
I am curious if at least one of Winston's children will part of the new team.
I'm betting it was one of Winston's sons who prompted him to revive the Ghostbusters in order to put on the pack himself.
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By Chicken, He Clucked
#4968533
RichardLess wrote: April 2nd, 2022, 7:19 pm Was Afterlife a success?

Afterlife failed to make more than the previous film

Afterlife failed to get better critical reviews than the previous film

It failed as a comedy

It failed at being scary
1. But on a smaller budget and during a pandemic + as you state what it made on merch and home release. It could've made a decent profit for Sony.

2. The critical reviews for both ATC and Afterlife were mired in the culture war of the last decade. I don't get how the franchise became embroiled in it, but Sony should be realistic and aware of it's own role in exploiting toxicity in marketing both movies. Answer the Call and Afterlife are solid movies with a lot of quality invested in their production.

3. Subjective. Was it perfect? No. It was funny, it was spooky, it was nostalgic, it was heartwarming. It scored an A- on Cinemascore.
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By mrmichaelt
#4968534
Davideverona wrote: April 3rd, 2022, 1:48 am I'm betting it was one of Winston's sons who prompted him to revive the Ghostbusters in order to put on the pack himself.
Or daughter. Hopefully the new team is a good mix of legacies and brand new characters. I'm not so keen on Oscar being one of them, as I like to think that thanks to the Ghostbusters, he went on to live a normal, healthy life.

But back to thread, it did get nominated for several awards to that is a measure of success, imo. Hard to see overall since we still don't really have total box office numbers though it should be at least $200 million.
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By RichardLess
#4968537
Chicken, He Clucked wrote: April 3rd, 2022, 3:26 am
RichardLess wrote: April 2nd, 2022, 7:19 pm Was Afterlife a success?

Afterlife failed to make more than the previous film

Afterlife failed to get better critical reviews than the previous film

It failed as a comedy

It failed at being scary
1. But on a smaller budget and during a pandemic + as you state what it made on merch and home release. It could've made a decent profit for Sony.

2. The critical reviews for both ATC and Afterlife were mired in the culture war of the last decade. I don't get how the franchise became embroiled in it, but Sony should be realistic and aware of it's own role in exploiting toxicity in marketing both movies. Answer the Call and Afterlife are solid movies with a lot of quality invested in their production.

3. Subjective. Was it perfect? No. It was funny, it was spooky, it was nostalgic, it was heartwarming. It scored an A- on Cinemascore.
I’m not sure the pandemic is a valid excuse considering the performance of other movies. At first I was in the camp of “ya it did pretty well considering the pandemic” but then you look at the movies that did better and there’s no reason Ghostbusters couldn’t have done more business. I mean…Spider-Man made in a day, a single day, what the entire gross of Ghostbusters was. So the pandemic wasn’t a factor there. Venom did well. James Bond did ok, Dune did well considering it was also available on HBO Max. And before anyone goes “well it’s Spider-Man of course it did insane numbers” that isn’t the point.

People went to the movies…for movies they really wanted to see. Also I can’t help but notice that GBA made almost exactly the same amount as GB16 domestically. That’s a pretty big coincidence. Or it’s not a coincidence. I’m leaning towards the latter.

And yes the budget was smaller than GB16. It got an A- cinemascore. Great. Wonderful. The problem is tho that the franchise isn’t growing. Sony’s looking at that 197 million dollar gross and the GB16 gross and thinking “Given the cost of movie making today, with the spectacle required to gain an audiences attention, how do we make money?”. They made one Ghostbusters movie on the cheap and they still barely made money. A sequel is only going to cost more. Look at this from Sony’s perspective and ask yourself “did this movie move the needle so that we can say with any degree of confidence that the next GB films we make will be a success” and I think that answer is a clear no. I think anyone who says different is lying to themselves.

Studios don’t want to break even. They don’t want to have to rely on home video and merch to make a profit. Those are suppose to be the freebies that make you the extra cash, not limp you across the finish line for a participation trophy.

Was Ghostbusters Afterlife a success? No. Was it a failure? Also no. It just…was. The movie seems almost forgotten now by the masses. It’s not talked about, not debated about. Not anymore. It left no indelible mark on the zeitgeist. Mini pufts didn’t become the next baby Yoda or Porg.

GBA is like Tuesday night sex. You had it, you kinda enjoyed it, it got the job done. But it wasn’t particularly memorable and you’ve forgotten all about it once the sweet kinky fun weekend sex rolls around.
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By Kingpin
#4968538
RichardLess wrote: April 3rd, 2022, 7:34 am Spider-Man made in a day, a single day, what the entire gross of Ghostbusters was.
Spider-Man had the reasonable guarantee of the Marvel crowd going out to see it, as well as being very highly-anticipated thanks to the poorest-kept secret in Hollywood of the return of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, along with the not-secret return of Alfred Molina and Willem Dafoe.

Understandably there was a lot working in its favour to get butts in seats for No Way Home.

Ghostbusters meanwhile has its' loyal fanbase, but as we've already established, it's substantially smaller... And then there was a notable portion of it that was firmly adamant it wasn't going to see it in the cinema, demanding that it go on streaming instead... A portion I can't say I've seen represented in any of the other major fandoms.

Further to that, something which can be blamed 100% on the pandemic was the multiple changes to the release date, with the film having to be rescheduled so often, it's understandable some of the public may've lost interest in it - again, some of those vocal fans vented their spleens to say they wouldn't go see it because it'd been postponed so much.

Beyond that, I guess the average cinemagoer may've been less willing to take a risk on going out to see Afterlife versus No Way Home. Maybe the fact that No Way Home was likely to be fun, while Afterlife had the shadow of Harold's passing over it led to some possible viewers to think it might not be as fun to watch as the first two movies?

People want to see movies, but I think a lot of them are more selective about it because of the pandemic, weighing the risk of whether the potential of exposure to someone carrying Covid is a price worth paying to see X movie.
RichardLess wrote: April 3rd, 2022, 7:34 amThe movie seems almost forgotten now by the masses. It’s not talked about, not debated about. Not anymore. It left no indelible mark on the zeitgeist. Mini pufts didn’t become the next baby Yoda or Porg.
And that's at least partly Sony's fault. Apart from more merchandise, the HasLab Pack, and the new game (which was announced back in 2021 and not explicitly the result of Afterlife), what exactly has Sony really done to keep the torch lit? we've currently seen no announcement of a sequel, the IDW comic series remains in limbo, meaning there's less to promote at the big comic conventions.

Sony wants a legacy franchise but is again not willing to put the time or money in to get one, and given the poor reviews that are being left for Morbius, they need to start paying attention to the few franchises they have that are doing moderately well.
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By RichardLess
#4968540
Kingpin wrote: April 3rd, 2022, 7:58 am
RichardLess wrote: April 3rd, 2022, 7:34 am Spider-Man made in a day, a single day, what the entire gross of Ghostbusters was.
Spider-Man had the reasonable guarantee of the Marvel crowd going out to see it, as well as being very highly-anticipated thanks to the poorest-kept secret in Hollywood of the return of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, along with the not-secret return of Alfred Molina and Willem Dafoe.

Understandably there was a lot working in its favour to get butts in seats for No Way Home.

Ghostbusters meanwhile has its' loyal fanbase, but as we've already established, it's substantially smaller... And then there was a notable portion of it that was firmly adamant it wasn't going to see it in the cinema, demanding that it go on streaming instead... A portion I can't say I've seen represented in any of the other major fandoms.

Further to that, something which can be blamed 100% on the pandemic was the multiple changes to the release date, with the film having to be rescheduled so often, it's understandable some of the public may've lost interest in it - again, some of those vocal fans vented their spleens to say they wouldn't go see it because it'd been postponed so much.

Beyond that, I guess the average cinemagoer may've been less willing to take a risk on going out to see Afterlife versus No Way Home. Maybe the fact that No Way Home was likely to be fun, while Afterlife had the shadow of Harold's passing over it led to some possible viewers to think it might not be as fun to watch as the first two movies?

People want to see movies, but I think a lot of them are more selective about it because of the pandemic, weighing the risk of whether the potential of exposure to someone carrying Covid is a price worth paying to see X movie.
RichardLess wrote: April 3rd, 2022, 7:34 amThe movie seems almost forgotten now by the masses. It’s not talked about, not debated about. Not anymore. It left no indelible mark on the zeitgeist. Mini pufts didn’t become the next baby Yoda or Porg.
And that's at least partly Sony's fault. Apart from more merchandise, the HasLab Pack, and the new game (which was announced back in 2021 and not explicitly the result of Afterlife), what exactly has Sony really done to keep the torch lit? we've currently seen no announcement of a sequel, the IDW comic series remains in limbo, meaning there's less to promote at the big comic conventions.

Sony wants a legacy franchise but is again not willing to put the time or money in to get one, and given the poor reviews that are being left for Morbius, they need to start paying attention to the few franchises they have that are doing moderately well.
You are 100% right about Sony not giving this franchise the tender love and care it’s due. Look at what Paramount is doing with Star Trek right now. You may not like the results but they are investing MILLIONS upon MiLlions. They realized their Trek movies can’t compete and weren’t making enough so what did they do? They bit the bullet and launched numerous shows and are growing the brand. They even have a new directors edition of Star Trek TMP getting remastered with new FX & scenes(after they didn’t future proof the previous version). They are investing in their biggest IP. Sony couldn’t even manage to do Spider-Man right without having to go to Marvel and say “help us please. Show us the way”

Or look what Paramount did with TNG on blu ray. Hundreds of episodes had to have the post production entirely redone and visual effects recomposited. As for DS9 and Voyager word on the street is they are currently remastering those for blu ray /HD streaming which is an insanely difficult process(the low down is to make those shows work for the money they had in the 1990s all the FX and post production work was completed on video instead of film and video has a terrible native resolution and so those shows can’t be upgraded to HD quality without massive investments. What makes things worse is halfway through the series they switched from models to CGI and the CGI was rendered at video resolution. And most of those FX companies have gone out of business so re rendering the FX is going to be difficult or impossible).

Meanwhile Sony is like… nah we won’t release Extreme Ghostbusters on home video. At all. And yeah, we will just let Time Life handle Real Ghostbusters. Time life. Then later we’ll put out some RGB sets and then just stop. Or we will put all the EGB and RGB episodes up on YouTube for free…and then take most of them down later. We will squeeze our loyal fans for every penny by releasing GB 1 & 2 on DVD, blu and 4K multiple times, each time with new special features to keep ‘em coming back for more.

Sony is the worst at brand management. The worst. How is there no new Ghostbusters animated series since(checks calendar) 1997! That’s how you grow the brand. Look at what Clone Wars did for the Star Wars prequels. No new animated series since 1997! 25 years ladies and gents, 25 years. And even then it was 1 season of 40 episodes aired on some shitty syndicated package at 6am in the morning.

When more adults are buying your toys than kids…you’ve messed up,
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By Chicken, He Clucked
#4968541
RichardLess wrote: I’m not sure the pandemic is a valid excuse considering the performance of other movies. At first I was in the camp of “ya it did pretty well considering the pandemic” but then you look at the movies that did better and there’s no reason Ghostbusters couldn’t have done more business. I mean…Spider-Man made in a day, a single day, what the entire gross of Ghostbusters was.
Spider-man is essentially an MCU movie, but also Spider-man is one of, if not THE, most popular characters in media, on a par with Batman. There's no way Sony had remotely the same expectations for these two movie franchises.
So the pandemic wasn’t a factor there. Venom did well. James Bond did ok, Dune did well considering it was also available on HBO Max. And before anyone goes “well it’s Spider-Man of course it did insane numbers” that isn’t the point.

People went to the movies…for movies they really wanted to see. Also I can’t help but notice that GBA made almost exactly the same amount as GB16 domestically. That’s a pretty big coincidence. Or it’s not a coincidence. I’m leaning towards the latter.
Venom and Bond are both sequels in an active franchise. ATC performance is a coincidence - these two GB movies attracted different audiences and one was released in the middle of Summer, the other in less than idea conditions in Nov. But look, I agree Sony would rather Afterlife made No Time To Die numbers... again expectations should have been in check... it had a smaller budget than ATC, it had a hushed and quick production (though sadly prolonged post-production and release window), it didn't prominently feature Paul Rudd or the original cast and wasn't titled Ghostbusters 3 : Afterlife (which may have been a marketing misstep in hindsight). Afterlife did make it into the Top Ten Grossing movies of the year, coming ahead of Free Guy domestically. Free Guy did pull in $100 million more but cost $50mill more to make.

Afterlife absolutely deserved to make more than the Venom movies. And it will be depressing if Morbius follows suit. I hope Morbius fails and that makes Sony more likely to invest in an Afterlife sequel.
The problem is tho that the franchise isn’t growing. Sony’s looking at that 197 million dollar gross and the GB16 gross and thinking “Given the cost of movie making today, with the spectacle required to gain an audiences attention, how do we make money?”.
Not all movies make No Way Home money, and that isn't realistic. Sony keep Marvel sweet and they can keep banking on that money... but their attempts at strong-arming Marvel and producing their own Spider-man Universe continually explode in their faces. Truly shocking how badly they're dropping the ball with this stuff. Heads should be rolling. Marvel have F4 and X-Men in their back pocket now so Spider-man becomes less essential for them.
They made one Ghostbusters movie on the cheap and they still barely made money. A sequel is only going to cost more. Look at this from Sony’s perspective and ask yourself “did this movie move the needle so that we can say with any degree of confidence that the next GB films we make will be a success” and I think that answer is a clear no. I think anyone who says different is lying to themselves.
I agree, but I also think from Sony's perspective it is 100% worth taking that gamble and I think they will. Also it made more than $197mill, should easily have cleared $200 but for some reason boxofficemojo isn't adding the remaining markets to the tally. There are enough mitigating factors to give it another shot: 1. The critical response to the younger cast means they can happily offload any expensive names. 2. The major criticisms of Afterlife are easily addressed in a sequel now the film doesn't have any heavy-lifting to do.
Studios don’t want to break even. They don’t want to have to rely on home video and merch to make a profit.
I think we'd need full knowledge of the finances to confirm that. If they don't proceed then I guess you're right. They made that announcement about production deal with Gil and Jason shortly after release. It's likely they'd want the kids to be substantially older for a sequel so tonally it can be closer to the originals. Given they'd be aiming for 2024 they might not want to announce the movie 2.5 years out. We may not hear anything until early 2023.
Was Ghostbusters Afterlife a success? No. Was it a failure? Also no. It just…was. The movie seems almost forgotten now by the masses. It’s not talked about, not debated about. Not anymore. It left no indelible mark on the zeitgeist. Mini pufts didn’t become the next baby Yoda or Porg.
But there are enough mitigating circumstances, and with Afterlife righting the ship, there is less likelihood an Afterlife sequel would be marred by tedious culture warring. The audience know it's a sequel to the originals this time. It would probably be set in New York so there's the opportunity to bring back the firehouse, Slimer, Moranis potentially for new callbacks, whilst telling a new story.
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By Kingpin
#4968545
Chicken, He Clucked wrote: April 3rd, 2022, 9:01 am It would probably be set in New York so there's the opportunity to bring back the firehouse, Slimer, Moranis potentially for new callbacks, whilst telling a new story.
Any interior shots would have to be on a sound stage set like they did for Answer The Call, the work on converting Fire Station №23 into a community center would either probably be finished, or still in progress - but would've changed the interior too much for "Ghostbusters 4" to film in it for the Firehouse.

As for Louis/Rick... I still struggle to understand this demand to bring back Louis Tully. Two cartoons and a movie have shown he's not as essential component to the franchise, and I'd rather respect Rick's desire to work on his own terms, rather than drag him into reprising a character the doesn't offer much opportunity for growth.
Chicken, He Clucked wrote: April 3rd, 2022, 9:03 am ^^^ Sorry for breaking up the post like that, it's not easy on the eyes - won't be doing that again.
Adding additional paragraph breaks might make it softer on the eyes... I usually respond to multiple points in the way you have as it helps to show what was said by the person you're responding to. :)
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By RichardLess
#4968547
Chicken, He Clucked wrote: April 3rd, 2022, 9:01 am
RichardLess wrote: I’m not sure the pandemic is a valid excuse considering the performance of other movies. At first I was in the camp of “ya it did pretty well considering the pandemic” but then you look at the movies that did better and there’s no reason Ghostbusters couldn’t have done more business. I mean…Spider-Man made in a day, a single day, what the entire gross of Ghostbusters was.
Spider-man is essentially an MCU movie, but also Spider-man is one of, if not THE, most popular characters in media, on a par with Batman. There's no way Sony had remotely the same expectations for these two movie franchises.
So the pandemic wasn’t a factor there. Venom did well. James Bond did ok, Dune did well considering it was also available on HBO Max. And before anyone goes “well it’s Spider-Man of course it did insane numbers” that isn’t the point.

People went to the movies…for movies they really wanted to see. Also I can’t help but notice that GBA made almost exactly the same amount as GB16 domestically. That’s a pretty big coincidence. Or it’s not a coincidence. I’m leaning towards the latter.
Venom and Bond are both sequels in an active franchise. ATC performance is a coincidence - these two GB movies attracted different audiences and one was released in the middle of Summer, the other in less than idea conditions in Nov. But look, I agree Sony would rather Afterlife made No Time To Die numbers... again expectations should have been in check... it had a smaller budget than ATC, it had a hushed and quick production (though sadly prolonged post-production and release window), it didn't prominently feature Paul Rudd or the original cast and wasn't titled Ghostbusters 3 : Afterlife (which may have been a marketing misstep in hindsight). Afterlife did make it into the Top Ten Grossing movies of the year, coming ahead of Free Guy domestically. Free Guy did pull in $100 million more but cost $50mill more to make.

Afterlife absolutely deserved to make more than the Venom movies. And it will be depressing if Morbius follows suit. I hope Morbius fails and that makes Sony more likely to invest in an Afterlife sequel.
The problem is tho that the franchise isn’t growing. Sony’s looking at that 197 million dollar gross and the GB16 gross and thinking “Given the cost of movie making today, with the spectacle required to gain an audiences attention, how do we make money?”.
Not all movies make No Way Home money, and that isn't realistic. Sony keep Marvel sweet and they can keep banking on that money... but their attempts at strong-arming Marvel and producing their own Spider-man Universe continually explode in their faces. Truly shocking how badly they're dropping the ball with this stuff. Heads should be rolling. Marvel have F4 and X-Men in their back pocket now so Spider-man becomes less essential for them.
They made one Ghostbusters movie on the cheap and they still barely made money. A sequel is only going to cost more. Look at this from Sony’s perspective and ask yourself “did this movie move the needle so that we can say with any degree of confidence that the next GB films we make will be a success” and I think that answer is a clear no. I think anyone who says different is lying to themselves.
I agree, but I also think from Sony's perspective it is 100% worth taking that gamble and I think they will. Also it made more than $197mill, should easily have cleared $200 but for some reason boxofficemojo isn't adding the remaining markets to the tally. There are enough mitigating factors to give it another shot: 1. The critical response to the younger cast means they can happily offload any expensive names. 2. The major criticisms of Afterlife are easily addressed in a sequel now the film doesn't have any heavy-lifting to do.
Studios don’t want to break even. They don’t want to have to rely on home video and merch to make a profit.
I think we'd need full knowledge of the finances to confirm that. If they don't proceed then I guess you're right. They made that announcement about production deal with Gil and Jason shortly after release. It's likely they'd want the kids to be substantially older for a sequel so tonally it can be closer to the originals. Given they'd be aiming for 2024 they might not want to announce the movie 2.5 years out. We may not hear anything until early 2023.
Was Ghostbusters Afterlife a success? No. Was it a failure? Also no. It just…was. The movie seems almost forgotten now by the masses. It’s not talked about, not debated about. Not anymore. It left no indelible mark on the zeitgeist. Mini pufts didn’t become the next baby Yoda or Porg.
But there are enough mitigating circumstances, and with Afterlife righting the ship, there is less likelihood an Afterlife sequel would be marred by tedious culture warring. The audience know it's a sequel to the originals this time. It would probably be set in New York so there's the opportunity to bring back the firehouse, Slimer, Moranis potentially for new callbacks, whilst telling a new story.

It’s funny. I knew someone was going to misunderstand my point about Spider-Man so I even went back and added a specific line about how the point wasn’t about Ghostbusters making more than Spider-Man or the difference in how much they made. And still I got “of course Spider-Man made more than Ghostbusters”.

No. It was about using the pandemic as an excuse. Spider-Man made 800 million domestic. That’s like, what? The 3rd biggest movie of all time. The point is people will show up for movies they want to see. The fact that you think it’s unreasonable that Ghostbusters makes as much or more *domestically* than James Bond, Venom, Shang Chi highlights the problem..

And Ghostbusters Afterlife almost making as much as an original I.P that isn’t a sequel isn’t the flex you think it is.

And you say Ghostbusters righted the ship. How? How did it right any ship? Where is the evidence for that? Because you liked it? Also cinemascore is not the “see! It’s a good movie! People like it” indicator you might think. You know what other movie got an A- cinemascore? Transformers Age of Extinction. Pearl Harbour. Armageddon. Great movies like Boogie Nights, Casino or Master & Commander all got B or B-. Cinemascore is just an indicator we use to judge what a movies legs might be at the B.o. it’s not a quality index. Look at the movies I’ve mentioned on IMDb and see their scores to see how those cinema scores hold up. I duno.
Maybe it did right the ship. Fans seem to be happy with it. That’s something. But again…it doesn’t feel like it had any real significance. It just…was. It’s everything wrong with movies today. Too much deference to the past, does nothing new, repeats plot points. It’s J.J Abrams Star Wars all over again.

Look, I get it. You’re a fan and you want to put a positive outlook on this. So you use all sorts of caveats and qualifiers and excuses. “Pandemic” “the culture war”, “it wasn’t in New York”. You say it’s coincidence that GBA and GB16 made almost the exact amount domestically, that’s a massive coincidences. GB2 disappointed at the box office. EGB got canceled after only 40 episodes. GB16 was a huge let down box office wise. And now we have GBA. There’s a pattern emerging and that pattern isn’t good

The question of the day is “ was Ghostbusters afterlife a success” and the answer has to be no, right? It has to be. Until we see concrete numbers that say otherwise right now we know it lost money at the box office. Yes home video has been good but even that can be misleading since home video has become a niche market.


We have 2 people who are to blame for the state of the franchise. Amy Pascal & Bill Murray. Had Bill Murray swallowed his ego and done the proper GB3 I know in my heart this franchise would be in a much better place. If this comes out in 2008? Man…just imagine. Or even 1999. Even the idea of lGhostbusters go to hell was cool. It was different.fresh. I’d be more interested in a big swing that missed than a movie that risks nothing and tries nothing.

Harold’s gone. Now Ivan. Sigh…

Yeah Sony signed Jason and the other guy to a deal but that deal was negotiated and done waaay before it was announced. Sony just rode the wave of publicity to announce it. Those deals are in works for months before they are announced. It wasn’t like the movie came out & Sony said “ok the movie did ok, now we can sign Jason now”.

Anyways, that’s enough from me, This latest episode of Richardless’s Rants, Ravings & Rumblings is brought to you the letter R.
User avatar
By Chicken, He Clucked
#4968553
RichardLess wrote: It’s funny. I knew someone was going to misunderstand my point about Spider-Man so I even went back and added a specific line about how the point wasn’t about Ghostbusters making more than Spider-Man or the difference in how much they made. And still I got “of course Spider-Man made more than Ghostbusters”.

No. It was about using the pandemic as an excuse. Spider-Man made 800 million domestic. That’s like, what? The 3rd biggest movie of all time. The point is people will show up for movies they want to see. The fact that you think it’s unreasonable that Ghostbusters makes as much or more *domestically* than James Bond, Venom, Shang Chi highlights the problem..

And Ghostbusters Afterlife almost making as much as an original I.P that isn’t a sequel isn’t the flex you think it is.

And you say Ghostbusters righted the ship. How? How did it right any ship? Where is the evidence for that? Because you liked it? Also cinemascore is not the “see! It’s a good movie! People like it” indicator you might think. You know what other movie got an A- cinemascore? Transformers Age of Extinction. Pearl Harbour. Armageddon. Great movies like Boogie Nights, Casino or Master & Commander all got B or B-. Cinemascore is just an indicator we use to judge what a movies legs might be at the B.o. it’s not a quality index. Look at the movies I’ve mentioned on IMDb and see their scores to see how those cinema scores hold up. I duno.
Maybe it did right the ship. Fans seem to be happy with it. That’s something. But again…it doesn’t feel like it had any real significance. It just…was. It’s everything wrong with movies today. Too much deference to the past, does nothing new, repeats plot points. It’s J.J Abrams Star Wars all over again.

Look, I get it. You’re a fan and you want to put a positive outlook on this. So you use all sorts of caveats and qualifiers and excuses. “Pandemic” “the culture war”, “it wasn’t in New York”. You say it’s coincidence that GBA and GB16 made almost the exact amount domestically, that’s a massive coincidences. GB2 disappointed at the box office. EGB got canceled after only 40 episodes. GB16 was a huge let down box office wise. And now we have GBA. There’s a pattern emerging and that pattern isn’t good

The question of the day is “ was Ghostbusters afterlife a success” and the answer has to be no, right? It has to be. Until we see concrete numbers that say otherwise right now we know it lost money at the box office. Yes home video has been good but even that can be misleading since home video has become a niche market.


We have 2 people who are to blame for the state of the franchise. Amy Pascal & Bill Murray. Had Bill Murray swallowed his ego and done the proper GB3 I know in my heart this franchise would be in a much better place. If this comes out in 2008? Man…just imagine. Or even 1999. Even the idea of lGhostbusters go to hell was cool. It was different.fresh. I’d be more interested in a big swing that missed than a movie that risks nothing and tries nothing.

Harold’s gone. Now Ivan. Sigh…

Yeah Sony signed Jason and the other guy to a deal but that deal was negotiated and done waaay before it was announced. Sony just rode the wave of publicity to announce it. Those deals are in works for months before they are announced. It wasn’t like the movie came out & Sony said “ok the movie did ok, now we can sign Jason now”.

Anyways, that’s enough from me, This latest episode of Richardless’s Rants, Ravings & Rumblings is brought to you the letter R.
I didn't misunderstand your point about Spider-man, I just think you're taking the wrong lesson away from it. People made an exemption for that movie, because of the popularity of Spider-man, MCU and the links back to the other Spider-men films, plus it following up on a cliffhanger: expectations were huge. It was the first major "unmissable" MCU release post-Endgame. A Ghostbusters sequel 5 years after ATC was never going to have that pulling power ever, and Sony wouldn't have expected it to. No other movie release in 2021 came close. The point that Ghostbusters ranked 9th in the year for top grossing movies proves that it performed well compared to the competition in the market, but people were never going to make an effort to go out for the type of movie it was: a lower budget indie sensibility with a largely new cast resurrecting a franchise with a patchy box office history. Mini Pufts were never going to break out because the budget didn't stretch to involve them enough outside of a couple of scenes (and being honest, the quality of the toys were mixed).

Free Guy was a Ryan Reynolds vehicle, one of the biggest stars right now, who was marketed as the protagonist and the comedy was front and centre, which likely appealed to Deadpool viewers. The timing of it's release was fortunate, it had positive reviews and word-of-mouth, had a concept which tapped into the Fortnite/GTA audience... it may have been an original IP but it had a bigger budget and a lot more buzz going into it.

The major disappointment for Ghostbusters Afterlife were the international numbers, though we don't have the final figures, they were probably in line with how the franchise has performed previously. ATC did more, but I think we can safely blame the varying pandemic situation across the globe for the weaker performance.

Afterlife would definitely have performed better in 2016... but it couldn't have been made in 2016 as a small family story about the Spengler's, and Sony wouldn't have let Jason and Ivan take the reigns. Those changes happened because of the restrictions imposed by ATC, and they were very smart decisions.

Afterlife righted the ship by re-establishing the original timeline, introducing a younger team to move forward and recaptured the tone of the originals, in an Amblin-esque sort of way. Were there missteps? A couple - mostly I just wanted more of some things, and less than others - but we're fans... these are the types of discussions all fans have about the movies. On my second watch I appreciated Afterlife a hell of a lot more and we're very lucky it even exists. Afterlife does plenty of new stuff, I don't get that criticism at all - aside from featuring Gozer, the plot was entirely different.

Yeah, Amy Pascal was wrong to take creative control away from Ivan, and Bill should've given the franchise some of his time and investment, preferably while Harold was still around, but even now... Afterlife mostly lacked a scene of the Peter, Ray and Winston chilling out of uniform and re-acquainting themselves with the audience.

"The culture war" isn't a caveat or excuse. It's a very real thing that is ongoing and had a major impact on the social media buzz around ATC and Afterlife.

But I do agree Ghostbuster as a franchise has a creative direction issue. You didn't mention Real Ghostbusters and that's telling, because look what happened to Real Ghostbusters once the powers that be started meddling. The original Real Ghostbusters writing team are so far the only proven example of how this property can exist as a long-form series and this is what the movie series, if there is one, needs to aim for before they think about "franchising" or "international" or "multiverse". If I were Ghost Corp, I'd have been reaching out to Straczynski in a creative advisor capacity, though now Afterlife is established Gil and Jason are more than capable with coming up with human stories... it's marrying that with the right kind of supernatural macguffin which will be the challenge.

GBII is a fine sequel and might have done better had it not gone up against Batman. You can't always account for competition. But it didn't bomb, it made a decent return.
Extreme GB... well, look, I know it has it's fans, but it's... pretty bad. Like... the writing, animation, the tone, the ghost designs. In it's defense it was going for a maturer cartoon style that was of it's time. But this seemed to translated into drab colour palettes and Men In Black reject aliens repurposed as "ghosts". Eduardo was a painful Peter replacement, Kylie was probably the standout, and the others are largely forgettable. Janine was demoted back to her Q5 version. Even the depiction of the RGB guys was depressing and off.
GB ATC is a decent movie. It's different to what fans wanted. But on it's own merit it is a funny, colourful, slick and engaging Feig improv-comedy. It could've been better, but it's perfectly fine. The discourse around it is not worth anyone's time and I genuinely think it might subject to a pop culture renaissance / reappraisal in future.

As to whether Afterlife was a success, I think it was, albeit a muted one. If Sony are smart they will let Ghost Corp continue with creative control for a sequel - at least with the same budget, but hopefully bumped up a bit as a show of confidence... and give it another roll of the dice. Don't under-estimate how much Sony wants their own mega-hit franchise.

Edit: And also, y'know, the fact they added in a sequel setup scene for the credits and Ernie Hudson calling Afterlife a "success" (literally) and talking on multiple occasions about them working on the script for a sequel already.
Last edited by Chicken, He Clucked on April 4th, 2022, 1:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Kingpin liked this
User avatar
By deadderek
#4968558
Chicken, He Clucked wrote: April 4th, 2022, 1:33 am
GB ATC is a decent movie. It's different to what fans wanted. But on it's own merit it is a funny, colourful, slick and engaging Feig improv-comedy. It could've been better, but it's perfectly fine. The discourse around it is not worth anyone's time and I genuinely think it might subject to a pop culture renaissance / reappraisal in future.
Image
User avatar
By Chicken, He Clucked
#4968563
deadderek wrote:Image
Can you appreciate the irony that you're lamenting a failure of the franchise to achieve success whilst simultaneously perpetuating a circular argument that only generates animosity for the franchise, alienates casual fans and impedes it's wider reach?
Alphagaia liked this
User avatar
By deadderek
#4968579
ATC won't be fondly looked at years later, I'm just expressing that we disagee. For your sake Kingpin I won't elaborate further.
User avatar
By RichardLess
#4968581
Chicken, He Clucked wrote: April 4th, 2022, 1:33 am
RichardLess wrote: It’s funny. I knew someone was going to misunderstand my point about Spider-Man so I even went back and added a specific line about how the point wasn’t about Ghostbusters making more than Spider-Man or the difference in how much they made. And still I got “of course Spider-Man made more than Ghostbusters”.

No. It was about using the pandemic as an excuse. Spider-Man made 800 million domestic. That’s like, what? The 3rd biggest movie of all time. The point is people will show up for movies they want to see. The fact that you think it’s unreasonable that Ghostbusters makes as much or more *domestically* than James Bond, Venom, Shang Chi highlights the problem..

And Ghostbusters Afterlife almost making as much as an original I.P that isn’t a sequel isn’t the flex you think it is.

And you say Ghostbusters righted the ship. How? How did it right any ship? Where is the evidence for that? Because you liked it? Also cinemascore is not the “see! It’s a good movie! People like it” indicator you might think. You know what other movie got an A- cinemascore? Transformers Age of Extinction. Pearl Harbour. Armageddon. Great movies like Boogie Nights, Casino or Master & Commander all got B or B-. Cinemascore is just an indicator we use to judge what a movies legs might be at the B.o. it’s not a quality index. Look at the movies I’ve mentioned on IMDb and see their scores to see how those cinema scores hold up. I duno.
Maybe it did right the ship. Fans seem to be happy with it. That’s something. But again…it doesn’t feel like it had any real significance. It just…was. It’s everything wrong with movies today. Too much deference to the past, does nothing new, repeats plot points. It’s J.J Abrams Star Wars all over again.

Look, I get it. You’re a fan and you want to put a positive outlook on this. So you use all sorts of caveats and qualifiers and excuses. “Pandemic” “the culture war”, “it wasn’t in New York”. You say it’s coincidence that GBA and GB16 made almost the exact amount domestically, that’s a massive coincidences. GB2 disappointed at the box office. EGB got canceled after only 40 episodes. GB16 was a huge let down box office wise. And now we have GBA. There’s a pattern emerging and that pattern isn’t good

The question of the day is “ was Ghostbusters afterlife a success” and the answer has to be no, right? It has to be. Until we see concrete numbers that say otherwise right now we know it lost money at the box office. Yes home video has been good but even that can be misleading since home video has become a niche market.


We have 2 people who are to blame for the state of the franchise. Amy Pascal & Bill Murray. Had Bill Murray swallowed his ego and done the proper GB3 I know in my heart this franchise would be in a much better place. If this comes out in 2008? Man…just imagine. Or even 1999. Even the idea of lGhostbusters go to hell was cool. It was different.fresh. I’d be more interested in a big swing that missed than a movie that risks nothing and tries nothing.

Harold’s gone. Now Ivan. Sigh…

Yeah Sony signed Jason and the other guy to a deal but that deal was negotiated and done waaay before it was announced. Sony just rode the wave of publicity to announce it. Those deals are in works for months before they are announced. It wasn’t like the movie came out & Sony said “ok the movie did ok, now we can sign Jason now”.

Anyways, that’s enough from me, This latest episode of Richardless’s Rants, Ravings & Rumblings is brought to you the letter R.
I didn't misunderstand your point about Spider-man, I just think you're taking the wrong lesson away from it. People made an exemption for that movie, because of the popularity of Spider-man, MCU and the links back to the other Spider-men films, plus it following up on a cliffhanger: expectations were huge. It was the first major "unmissable" MCU release post-Endgame. A Ghostbusters sequel 5 years after ATC was never going to have that pulling power ever, and Sony wouldn't have expected it to. No other movie release in 2021 came close. The point that Ghostbusters ranked 9th in the year for top grossing movies proves that it performed well compared to the competition in the market, but people were never going to make an effort to go out for the type of movie it was: a lower budget indie sensibility with a largely new cast resurrecting a franchise with a patchy box office history. Mini Pufts were never going to break out because the budget didn't stretch to involve them enough outside of a couple of scenes (and being honest, the quality of the toys were mixed).

Free Guy was a Ryan Reynolds vehicle, one of the biggest stars right now, who was marketed as the protagonist and the comedy was front and centre, which likely appealed to Deadpool viewers. The timing of it's release was fortunate, it had positive reviews and word-of-mouth, had a concept which tapped into the Fortnite/GTA audience... it may have been an original IP but it had a bigger budget and a lot more buzz going into it.

The major disappointment for Ghostbusters Afterlife were the international numbers, though we don't have the final figures, they were probably in line with how the franchise has performed previously. ATC did more, but I think we can safely blame the varying pandemic situation across the globe for the weaker performance.

Afterlife would definitely have performed better in 2016... but it couldn't have been made in 2016 as a small family story about the Spengler's, and Sony wouldn't have let Jason and Ivan take the reigns. Those changes happened because of the restrictions imposed by ATC, and they were very smart decisions.

Afterlife righted the ship by re-establishing the original timeline, introducing a younger team to move forward and recaptured the tone of the originals, in an Amblin-esque sort of way. Were there missteps? A couple - mostly I just wanted more of some things, and less than others - but we're fans... these are the types of discussions all fans have about the movies. On my second watch I appreciated Afterlife a hell of a lot more and we're very lucky it even exists. Afterlife does plenty of new stuff, I don't get that criticism at all - aside from featuring Gozer, the plot was entirely different.

Yeah, Amy Pascal was wrong to take creative control away from Ivan, and Bill should've given the franchise some of his time and investment, preferably while Harold was still around, but even now... Afterlife mostly lacked a scene of the Peter, Ray and Winston chilling out of uniform and re-acquainting themselves with the audience.

"The culture war" isn't a caveat or excuse. It's a very real thing that is ongoing and had a major impact on the social media buzz around ATC and Afterlife.

But I do agree Ghostbuster as a franchise has a creative direction issue. You didn't mention Real Ghostbusters and that's telling, because look what happened to Real Ghostbusters once the powers that be started meddling. The original Real Ghostbusters writing team are so far the only proven example of how this property can exist as a long-form series and this is what the movie series, if there is one, needs to aim for before they think about "franchising" or "international" or "multiverse". If I were Ghost Corp, I'd have been reaching out to Straczynski in a creative advisor capacity, though now Afterlife is established Gil and Jason are more than capable with coming up with human stories... it's marrying that with the right kind of supernatural macguffin which will be the challenge.

GBII is a fine sequel and might have done better had it not gone up against Batman. You can't always account for competition. But it didn't bomb, it made a decent return.
Extreme GB... well, look, I know it has it's fans, but it's... pretty bad. Like... the writing, animation, the tone, the ghost designs. In it's defense it was going for a maturer cartoon style that was of it's time. But this seemed to translated into drab colour palettes and Men In Black reject aliens repurposed as "ghosts". Eduardo was a painful Peter replacement, Kylie was probably the standout, and the others are largely forgettable. Janine was demoted back to her Q5 version. Even the depiction of the RGB guys was depressing and off.
GB ATC is a decent movie. It's different to what fans wanted. But on it's own merit it is a funny, colourful, slick and engaging Feig improv-comedy. It could've been better, but it's perfectly fine. The discourse around it is not worth anyone's time and I genuinely think it might subject to a pop culture renaissance / reappraisal in future.

As to whether Afterlife was a success, I think it was, albeit a muted one. If Sony are smart they will let Ghost Corp continue with creative control for a sequel - at least with the same budget, but hopefully bumped up a bit as a show of confidence... and give it another roll of the dice. Don't under-estimate how much Sony wants their own mega-hit franchise.

Edit: And also, y'know, the fact they added in a sequel setup scene for the credits and Ernie Hudson calling Afterlife a "success" (literally) and talking on multiple occasions about them working on the script for a sequel already.


“If Sony are Smart”

Ha.


You didn’t like EGB? Man. I thought EGB was terrific. Way ahead of it’s time. You may find a character in a wheel chair as a Ghostbuster forgettable but as someone who grew up with disabled family members? Man. Garret ruled. The show was dark, legit scary and had some actual funny moments. I agree the animation was lacking…but that was a good show. Episodes like “Darkness at Noon”, “Deadliners” “Back in the Saddle”, “Killjoys” “Dry Spell” & “Slimers Sacrifice” are better imo than 95% of RGB episodes. Plus that song remix effing slaps.

And I love GB2 and you are right that Batman definitely ate some of its box office but Jesus…not that much. 112m? With Batman GB2 should’ve been able to hit 150-160m. For some reason GB2 got a bum rap in 1989.

But yeah I read a lot of what you wrote and it just reads like a list of excuses. I don’t care if the movie is Spider Man or the 2nd coming of Jesus. When you have a movie doing 2 billion dollars and your movie can’t beat the total of a a disliked sequel from 1989? I mean come on. I bought into the “oh this is actually pretty good”. But then I realized I was buying into the studio’s PR. I don’t expect the movie to make 500 million but I think anything below 300 worldwide and 150 domestic is a huge disappointment.

Any person with a brain at Sony right now is looking at this franchise and thinking, monetarily, unless we do something and do it fast, this franchises best days are behind it and we have a ceiling on what this franchise can do. That’s not a good place to be.

I don’t know what the answer is…but if Sony wants to grow this franchise, I don’t think it’s Jason Reitman. He didn’t make this movie the one of two things that gets butts in seats. He didn’t make it funny and he didn’t make it epic. And he didn’t utilize the original cast in a prominent way. So ok. 3 things.

Frankly I think making the Kids the focus of the story was in retrospect a massive mistake. Same with casting the kid from Stranger Things. The movie was never able to shed that “rip off” moniker, fair or not. And I liked Phoebe..I do. And Podcast. But how do you have Paul Rudd not put on a GB uniform and bust some ghosts? I think if the movie went in that direction? Adults instead of kids, you’ve got a bigger movie. Having the kids be the Ghostbusters leaves the movie with nowhere to go. Phoebe is what? 13?

Anyways. I think we are just going to have to agree to disagree. I do think you should give EGB another shot if you haven’t seen it in awhile. It’s not perfect but I enjoy it.
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