Ghostbusters: Night Shift Returns the Franchise To Animation, its Natural Home

For now four consecutive feature films, bustin’ has made audiences feel okay-to-bad. After the classic that is 1984’s Ghostbusters, the franchise has gone through multiple sequels and reboots, none of which have come close to recreating the magic of the first film. Conventional wisdom would say that Ghostbusters should be a one-off, and any attempt to expand the franchise wreaks of desperate IP-mining.

The announcement of the Sony and Netflix series Ghostbusters: Night Shift contradicts that wisdom. Night Shift will be an animated series, bringing the franchise back to its natural home. The series The Real Ghostbusters, which aired 150 episodes between 1986 and 1991, cemented the fact that the adventures of four regular guys dealing with supernatural effects work best as a cartoon.

To be clear, this does not mean that The Real Ghostbusters is better than the first Ghostbusters. The original Ghostbusters remains an incredible watch, despite its many flaws. The effects still look incredible, the jokes land, and the movie escalates the threat in way that satisfies blockbuster demands without compromising the everyman nature of the heroes.

It’s just that Ghostbusters shouldn’t work, and, by all accounts, barely made it to screen in the form that we know and love today. Originally, Dan Aykroyd—a true believer in all-things paranormal—designed a supernatural epic, and planned to cast his SNL co-stars John Belushi and Eddie Murphy. When Belushi’s death and Murphy’s rising star forced a change, the studio and director Ivan Reitman retooled, cutting down the script and giving Bill Murray plenty of space to riff.

We all know the result: an incredible comedy that somehow overcomes its jankiness, its pro-free-market, anti-EPA politics, and its absolute underutilization of Ernie Hudson to become an all-time great.

The Real Ghostbusters certainly had its own problems, including a copyright claim that forced them to add the confusing adjective to the title and Murray suing original Venkman voice-actor Lorenzo Music. But the series turned out to be exactly what the Ghostbusters needed, an engine for new spooky adventures for our heroes. Even the less-loved spin-off series Extreme Ghostbusters (1997) retained some of the charm of the first series.

At this point, we don’t know much about Night Shift other than the title and the creative team, but even that little bit of information has us feeling some optimism. The writing staff includes Elliott Kalan who, in addition to working on The Daily Show and the Mystery Science Theater 3000 reboot, wrote the oft-memed X-Men panel of Sauron extolling to Spider-Man the virtues of turning people into dinosaurs instead of curing cancer.

Furthermore, Night Shift comes right after Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, a movie that only worked when it was doing Stranger Things-style adventures with the younger cast. Gil Kenan, who directed Frozen Empire, will be producing Night Shift, along with Jason Reitman (who directed the dire Ghostbusters: Afterlife—which was co-written by Kenan).

With these elements in place, Night Shift has the potential to be a great Ghostbusters entry, continuing the legacy of the cartoon shows and delivering on the promise of the movies.