‘Ghostbusters’ franchise turns 40 and is still Stay Puft fresh

Susan King
·4 min read

The summer of ’84 was golden. The Summer Olympics and the Olympics Arts Festival transformed host city Los Angeles into an athletic and artistic mecca. Bruce Springsteen was burning up arenas with his “Born in the USA” tour. Geraldine Ferraro made history when she was named Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale’s running mate making her the first woman to be part of a major party’s national ticket.

And the quirky horror comedy “Ghostbusters” was scaring up big bucks at the box office. Taking in in nearly $300 million, it was the No. 1 film of the year. Directed by the late Ivan Reitman “Ghostbusters” starred Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis and Annie Potts and revolved around a group of parapsychologists who open a ghost removal service in New York City. Ray Parker’s catchy theme song hit No. 1 and was nominated for an Oscar as were the special effects that included a Godzilla-sized marshmallow man

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The franchise spawned two animated series, video games and four movies: 1989’s “Ghostbusters II,” 2016’s “Ghostbusters,” 2021’s “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” directed by Reitman’s son and set in Oklahoma, and the recently released “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” which moves the action back to New York blending the cast of “Afterlife” with the original Busters.

Ironically, Ivan Reitman told me in a 2014 L.A. Times interview that expectations were low for the film before it was released on June 8. To raise “Ghostbusters’” profile, he came up with the creative tag line “Coming to Save the World” for the pre-release poster. “I was trying to do something that at least indicated that perhaps there was going to be something special going on, and the idea of saving the word wasn’t such a common idea; now the world gets save primarily by Marvel.”

Aykroyd originally wrote the outline for the film for he and John Belushi to star in. Belushi died in 1982; a year later, Aykroyd sent it to Reitman because he thought “I would be an appropriate director to put him and Bill Murray together. It took place in the future in outer space and there were all sorts of teams of ghostbusters fighting each other.” A mere 13 months before the film opened Reitman met with Aykroyd over at lunch at Art’s Deli. The filmmaker told Aykroyd it would be too expensive to make this movie stating “It has great ideas in it. Why don’t we tell the story of the Ghostbusters?” Reitman brought the late Ramis into the mix and the three wrote a draft at Aykroyd’s house at Martha’s Vineyard.

Reitman recalled the first day of production: “I was on the streets of Manhattan shooting with the four guys. Seeing them in full regalia, I just had this special feeling. I thought ‘This looks so unusual and wonderful; I think this can work.’” The director, who died in 2022, felt that the film has endured because it had a “feel-good quality that creates something that is more than timeless. When I think of my childhood, that movie was ‘The Wizard of Oz’ or ‘Singin’ in the Rain’ — films that made you happy. I think ‘Ghostbusters’ is a movie that finally, when you end up watching it, makes you happy.”

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