Bill Murray will officially be back as Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Paging Dr. Venkman!
Bill Murray will officially reprise his iconic role as Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters: Afterlife (out July 10). The actor previously played the sardonic supernatural investigator in the first film in the franchise, 1984’s Ghostbusters, and its 1989 sequel, Ghostbusters II. While Murray made a cameo appearance in the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot, it was as a different character, a debunker of the alleged supernatural named Martin Heiss.
Details of Murray’s return were first reported by Vanity Fair correspondent (and EW alum) Anthony Breznican. Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson were previously confirmed to reprise their roles as Venkman’s fellow ghostbusters Ray Stantz and Winston Zeddemore. The fourth member of the original team, Egon Spengler, was played by Harold Ramis, who died in 2014.
“Well, we are a man down. That’s the deal,” Murray told Vanity Fair. “And that’s the story that we’re telling, that’s the story they’ve written.”
Per VF, each surviving actor from the original quartet “has a meaningful role in the movie, but they won’t be the central heroes this time.”
“The script is good,” Murray told the publication. “It’s got lots of emotion in it. It’s got lots of family in it, with through lines that are really interesting. It’s gonna work.”
Directed by Jason Reitman (the son of filmmaker Ivan Reitman, who helmed the first two Ghostbusters movies), Ghostbusters: Afterlife stars Carrie Coon as a mother named Callie, and McKenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard as her children, Phoebe and Trevor. Together they move to Oklahoma after Callie inherits property from a father she didn’t know. Afterlife also stars Paul Rudd.
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