Well, here’s something that you don’t see everyday: Dan Aykroyd was right about something. Back in November, he insisted that Bill Murray would return in some capacity for Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife—the new sequel to the original two movies that’s being made for the “real” fans, but not in a way that’s sexist (apparently)—and now Vanity Fair is reporting that, yes, Murray will be in the movie and he’ll have a “meaningful” role. Murray has always had a prickly attitude toward new Ghostbusters stuff, so even though he reprised his role as Peter Venkman for the 2009 Ghostbusters video game and had a winky cameo in the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot, it never seemed like a given that he would be involved in Afterlife.
But no, he’s totally in it, and Vanity Fair has a whole on-set interview with him where he talks about how much he likes the script and how he appreciates that it’s handing the Ghostbusters brand on to younger people (which is to say, people who aren’t him). As for that meaningful role, that’s apparently what each of the surviving ‘Busters is getting, with Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson both appearing in the film as well—though none of them are “the central heroes.” As we saw in the trailer, Afterlife stars Carrie Coon, McKenna Grace, and Finn Wolfhard as the family of the now-deceased Egon Spengler (though Reitman is being annoyingly cagey about confirming that), and they somehow stumble onto Egon’s old ghost-busting gear with some help from Paul Rudd, who seems to be playing the only person in this world who remembers that New York was terrorized by ghosts in the ‘80s (back when it was a real city and not Giuliani’s Walt Disney World version of a city).
Ghostbusters: Afterlife and its “meaningful” role for Bill Murray, will be in theaters on July 10.