After an extremely long development cycle, Sony and Netflix are finally ready to release information on Ghostbusters: Night Shift from the containment unit. Even though it’s Annecy, they still aren’t willing to reveal much visually — two pieces of concept art with the characters in silhouette are all we get for now — but they did fully explain the premise.
The biggest question people had about this show was: which continuity is it? Are we getting the original Ghostbusters back in animated form? Is it the Afterlife / Frozen Empire crew instead? Or are these the Real Ghostbusters of Saturday Morning fame coming back for a revival? The answer is…NONE of those things. It’s entirely new characters in an entirely new canon.
Actually, according to showrunner Elliot Kalan, it takes the first two films into canon and then goes in a different direction from there. The series is set in 1994, five years after the Statue of Liberty marched down Manhattan. The original ghost-busting team has disbanded, seemingly for good. So when spectral evil starts haunting New York citizens once more, WHO are they gonna call?
It’s up to a group of young teens to form a new team and figure out the tricks of ghostbusting the best way they can. There’s Belladonna the goth, Mitzi the punk, Zoe the kid sister, Travis the conman, Mike the scientist…WAAAAIT a crying minute, this is sounding an awful lot like Extreme Ghostbusters (which also took place in the 90s, but involuntarily). I don’t know who Belladonna is, but this is Kylie erasure and I won’t stand for it!
And some are going to consider this blasphemy: there’s no Slimer. This is the first time the fan-favorite friendly glutton has been left out. Instead, he’s been replaced by (name to be revealed), the Terror Puppy. “He’s like the classic Terror Dog demons from the original ’84 Ghostbusters except that he’s a puppy,” says Kalan. “He’s rambunctious and playful, [and] when he pees on things, they burst into flames!” We guess maybe the inevitable Hi-C Terror Puppy Cooler will be colored yellow.
From the quotes provided, Kalan and executive producer Jason Reitman, Gil Kenan, and co-showrunner Ben Hibon make it sound like they have never even heard of Extreme Ghostbusters. They talk about doing research to put a gritty 90s aesthetic on the whole presentation, but….like….they didn’t have to do any. A thing already exists that is exactly what they are trying to do! How can they not know??
If anyone involved with Ghostbusters: Night Shift cares to drop us a line via E-mail, we’d appreciate it. Because we here at AS find this production mightily confusing. The only two possibilities are they really did not know about the other show, or they are ripping it off intentionally…and neither are a good look for them. The series debuts on Netflix in 2027.
