Yahoo Movies Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire director Gil Kenan shares hopes for more sequels
The filmmaker says Mckenna Grace's Phoebe Spengler is at the heart of the franchise's future
Watch: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire director on the future of the series
As Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire hits UK cinemas, its director and co-writer Gil Kenan has hinted there’s more to come from the intrepid spook destroyers – and Megan Mckenna's Phoebe Spengler in particular.
Talking to Yahoo Entertainment UK, he revealed, “I would love to see them come back for another adventure,” adding that he and co-writer Jason Reitman are “branching out into some other forms of storytelling.
"For the first time in a very long time, there’s a new animated series in the works and I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t something that came out of the world of Ghostbusters in the next few years that we had some involvement in.”
Plans for an animation, which is bound for Netflix, were announced back in 2022 and Kenan recently confirmed the show was in full development, with scripts being written. This would be the third outing for the Ghostbusters in animated form following The Real Ghostbusters and Extreme Ghostbusters.
But his anticipation of another project in the next few years points to something else on the cards. And his description of how he and Jason Reitman first talked about the idea behind Frozen Empire to the franchise’s creator, the late Ivan Reitman, hints at one of the Spengler family coming to the fore.
“The story of Frozen Empire began with Jason and I sitting down with Ivan and telling him the next chapter of the Phoebe Spengler saga, which we had just started to write and flesh out.”
Sounds like there’s a whole lot more to come from the spook-busting teenage science geek. But with nearly every ghost from the previous films returning for this latest instalment, the next potential storyline is open to question.
Kenan’s involvement with Ghostbusters started with seeing the original film when he was a youngster back in 1984, so being entrusted with directing this latest instalment is “both terrifying and exhilarating. As a movie fan, I really hope there are more Ghostbusters movies.
"They create an experience in a movie theatre that I don’t feel I get enough of – that classic, thrill ride experience, that rollercoaster of comedy and horror.”
Following on from Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which Kenan also wrote and is “incredibly proud of”, Frozen Empire sees the Spengler family (Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard and Mckenna Grace) back in New York and living in the original Ghostbuster’s fire station.
It reunites them with the team from the first two movies, Venkman (Bill Murray), Winston (Ernie Hudson) and Stantz (Dan Aykroyd), when a powerful ghost is released from an ancient artefact and threatens to turn the entire planet to ice.
Oscar nominated for the 2006 animation Monster House, Kenan executive produced both Frozen Empire and its predecessor, Afterlife.
And, as writer and producer of the forthcoming SNL 1975, he’s working again with one of the new generation of Ghostbusters, Finn Wolfhard, who plays Trevor Spengler.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is in cinemas and IMAX now.
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