Ghostbusters: The Video Game is an action adventure game based on the Ghostbusters franchise. The game was made by multiple developers. Terminal Reality developed the…
Ghostbusters: The Video Game
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Ghostbusters is Ivan Reitman’s 1984 comedy horror franchise following a team of parapsychologists who investigate and capture ghosts in New York City. One of the most commercially successful comedies of its era, the franchise spans five films in the main continuity, a standalone 2016 reboot, animated series, games, and a theme park presence that has lasted four decades. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire in 2024 was the most recent theatrical entry, and an animated Netflix series is in development alongside a planned new feature film.
Ivan Reitman directed the original Ghostbusters from a screenplay by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, released in June 1984 by Columbia Pictures. Bill Murray played Peter Venkman, a cynical psychology professor more interested in romance than research. Dan Aykroyd played Ray Stantz, the true believer whose enthusiasm for the paranormal drives the team. Harold Ramis played Egon Spengler, the brilliant engineer who designs the proton pack technology that makes ghost capture possible. Ernie Hudson played Winston Zeddemore, the everyman who joins the team for the paycheck and ends up saving New York. Sigourney Weaver played Dana Barrett, the cellist in the building across from the firehouse who becomes possessed by a demigod named Zuul.
The film grossed over $295 million worldwide against a $30 million budget and became a cultural phenomenon, generating merchandise, an animated series, and a sequel within five years. The proton pack, the Ecto-1, Slimer, and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man became images as recognizable as the characters themselves. Ray Parker Jr.’s theme song spent three weeks at number one.
Ivan Reitman directed Ghostbusters II in 1989, reuniting the original cast for a story involving a river of negative emotional energy beneath Manhattan and a portrait of a 16th century Carpathian tyrant named Vigo. The sequel was commercially successful, grossing over $215 million worldwide, but received a more divided critical response than the original. It remains the last film to feature the full original lineup in their prime, and Harold Ramis’s death in February 2014 made a direct continuation of their story impossible.
Paul Feig directed a complete reboot of Ghostbusters in 2016 with a new all-female cast: Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones. The film was positioned as a standalone reimagining rather than a continuation, and its reception was complicated by a fan backlash that preceded its release and colored coverage throughout its theatrical run. The film grossed around $229 million worldwide against a $144 million budget, which given the marketing costs represented a loss, and no sequel was produced. It does not share continuity with any other film in the franchise.
Jason Reitman, son of Ivan Reitman, directed Ghostbusters: Afterlife in 2021, a direct continuation of the 1984 and 1989 films set in rural Oklahoma where the descendants of Egon Spengler discover his secret research. Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, and Mckenna Grace played the new generation of Ghostbusters alongside Paul Rudd, with the surviving original cast members returning for a finale that addressed Harold Ramis’s absence directly. The film grossed over $200 million worldwide and reestablished the franchise as a commercially viable property.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire arrived in March 2024, directed by Gil Kenan, returning the action to New York and the original firehouse. The film introduced a new supernatural threat connected to an ancient Ghostbusters-like order while continuing the multi-generational ensemble approach of Afterlife. It grossed over $200 million worldwide, broadly matching its predecessor’s performance.
Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed was released in October 2022 by IllFonic, the studio behind Friday the 13th: The Game and the upcoming Halloween game. The asymmetrical multiplayer title casts one player as a ghost against four players as Ghostbusters in a format similar to Dead by Daylight. Ernie Hudson and Dan Aykroyd reprised their roles as Winston and Ray respectively, and the game drew from both the original film’s aesthetic and the Afterlife era. The franchise has a long gaming history across platforms, with the 2009 Ghostbusters: The Video Game, co-written by Aykroyd and Ramis and often described as a spiritual Ghostbusters III, among the more well-regarded entries.
Sony is developing multiple new Ghostbusters projects following Frozen Empire. Gil Kenan confirmed the development of an animated Ghostbusters series for Netflix, with scripts being written and art being created. A new theatrical film is in development with no confirmed release date, with the earliest estimates pointing to 2027 or 2028. Director Gil Kenan has indicated that more stories are in the works, and Ernie Hudson has expressed interest in a more action-heavy role going forward. The franchise’s Sony ownership aligns with the studio’s other major properties, and the consistent commercial performance of recent entries gives it a stable foundation for continued expansion.
The original Ghostbusters works because it is a comedy about professionals taking their absurd job seriously. Murray’s Venkman provides the ironic distance while Aykroyd and Ramis play it completely straight, and the film’s jokes land because the characters are genuinely invested in the outcome. The emotional anchor is the friendship between the four leads, which reads as authentic partly because Aykroyd and Ramis wrote it as a personal project and partly because the cast clearly enjoyed each other. That chemistry has been the hardest thing for subsequent entries to replicate, and the franchise’s multi-generational approach since Afterlife is the most honest acknowledgment that the original cast cannot be replaced, only honored and built from.
Ghostbusters: The Video Game is an action adventure game based on the Ghostbusters franchise. The game was made by multiple developers. Terminal Reality developed the…