Ghostbusters films haven’t been doing mega box office numbers – but there are more on the way. A few thoughts on a new way forward for big movies.
Over the weekend, a little sliver of news popped out regarding the future of the Ghostbusters big screen franchise. It’s been radio silence there for a few months, but finally, the confirmation that Sony intends to carry on with the series of films.
Gil Kenan, who along with Jason Reitman has been the creative driving force behind 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife and this year’s Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, told The Direct that “we definitely are continuing the conversation of telling big Ghostbusters stories on the big screen. And stay tuned. There’ll be more. There’ll be more about that later.”
On the surface, that’s an unsurprising story. But dig a little deeper, and there might be a way forward for blockbuster movies where a billion dollars of revenue isn’t the perquisite.
Kenan directed Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire and Reitman took that job on Ghostbusters: Afterlife, with the pair sharing writing duties. And what unites both of those films is, by modern stands, their budget was relatively modest, as were their box office returns. Yet there’s clearly a financial model that Sony has tapped into, that means the films can keep coming.
Turning to numbers, the reported production cost of Afterlife was deliberately kept lean, at $75m. A lot of money, certainly, and roughly what Danny Boyle’s upcoming 28 Years Later is set to be costing. But still, for an effects-heavy franchise movie, that wouldn’t buy you the hour of a Marvel film. Nonetheless, Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan deliberately went down that road, and it took some of the box office pressure off their movies.
The price of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire escalated to $100m. Again though, in an era where another fifth film in a franchise, Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, cost over $300m to make, it seems quite frugal. Even though things had escalated, they didn’t escalate that much.
What’s interesting is that, whatever you think of either film, neither really set the box office alight. Both had a decent weekend, but both topped out around $200m globally ($204m for Afterlife, $202m for Frozen Empire). To put that into context, the biggest live action hit of 2024 – Deadpool And Wolverine – took around $205m in its opening weekend, in America alone. It’s playing on a very different field.
Further context: this piece is being written a week or two after the release of the new Joker film, Joker: Folie A Deux. That film’s total worldwide gross is now looking like it’ll top out at $400m worldwide maximum. Articles are out there calling it a box office bomb. It’s certainly a huge financial disappointment, and of course it’s cost more money to realise than the two most recent Ghostbusters movies.
But still, there’s a lot of short-termism to the box office game, with major studios owned by conglomerates that require quarterly reports and instant financial reactions. Never mind that a film can keep earning for decades: the modern Hollywood studio is about the right here, right now. If the initial response to your film isn’t people giving it zillions of dollars, go and sit in the naughty corner.
I keep coming back to, though, comments that Chris Pine has made about the Star Trek big screen saga. The last three Star Trek films – 2009’s Star Trek, 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness and 2016’s Star Trek Beyond – have never troubled the $500m mark at the box office, at a point when many comic book movies and live action remakes appeared to be effortlessly gliding past such a number.
Somewhat inevitably, when one studio keeps churning out billion dollar hits, others are eager to copy the template. And given that the modern studio only has the capacity for a film a month or so, the slots are going to the bigger bets. That, or the micro-budget projects.
Paramount has thus got itself stuck with Star Trek on the big screen, and it was Pine who identified the problem. Reflecting on the films, he said that “We always tried to get the huge international market. It was always about making the billion dollars. It was always this billion-dollar mark because Marvel was making a billion. Billion, billion, billion.”
But with Star Trek? “I’ve always thought that Star Trek should operate in the zone that is smaller. You know, it’s not a Marvel appeal. It’s like, let’s make the movie for the people that love this group of people, that love this story, that love Star Trek. Let’s make it for them and then, if people want to come to the party, great. But make it for a price and make it, so that if it makes a half-billion dollars, that’s really good.”
At the point he talking about this – and it’s all written up here – there was a concern that studios wouldn’t entertain aiming a little lower. But then, isn’t that what Ghostbusters has just done? Hasn’t there been an acceptance that this isn’t a gigantic franchise by comparison to Marvel, but it does have a loyal audience, and maybe it’s okay to target the films at them?
It’s something I fully accept you can only do in the safe surroundings of an existing franchise. That way, Sony knows full well that even in the cinema takings aren’t great, there’s the insurance policy of enduring interest in the film (want proof? 1997’s Batman & Robin just got a cinema re-release).
As such, it continues its commitment to Ghostbusters films, content that they’re continually attracting a solid core audience, even if they’re not recruiting that many new people just yet. But it’s five films out there now, with a long-mooted animated movie still rumoured, and Messrs Kenan and Reitman – once they’re done promoting their new movie, Saturday Night (below) – seemingly readying another live action feature in the series.
Sony is, on the quiet, shining a light forward that other studios – if they’re brave enough – might like to follow. An acceptance that you don’t need to spend $200-300m to make a big film, and that it’s okay not to make a billion too. That studios – particularly with streamers hungry for movies, and decreasingly keen to make them themselves – can do perfectly well out of a modest box office success, providing they’re willing to play the long game.
It’s no coincidence, I suspect, that it was Sony that won the bidding for 28 Years Later, made to similar scale as its last Ghostbusters films.
In an ideal world, the more modest thinking wouldn’t just be restricted to franchise movies, and could splinter out to original, mid-budget fare. But I’m a realist, and let’s take it one stage at a time. For now, here’s a way to unlock franchises that don’t demand a superhero. The likes of Star Trek, National Treasure, RoboCop, The X-Files, Free Willy, big screen Muppet films… you name it.
I’m not advocating sequels to all of those (well, apart from Free Willy, obviously), but at least there’s a pathway to them. And who knows? If it starts to upend the short-termism in blockbuster cinema, we might start getting those long-lost mid-budget films more regularly on the big screen again…
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