{"id":565244,"date":"2026-07-02T13:44:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T13:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/565244\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T13:44:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T13:44:13","slug":"ghostbusters-night-shift-animated-series-netflix-jason-reitman-annecy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/565244\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghostbusters Night Shift animated series Netflix Jason Reitman annecy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Can Ghostbusters<\/a> pull off a Lucas\/Filoni? <\/p>\n

In the early 2000s, in the wake of the commercially successful but critically divisive Star Wars prequels, George Lucas shifted the franchise\u2019s center of gravity away from features and toward animation<\/a>. Working with Dave Filoni, he helped build a slate of animated series \u2014 including The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels and The Bad Batch \u2014 that deepened the mythology and, over time, became central to the franchise\u2019s canon. Those shows would later prove to be the connective tissue feeding into Disney\u2019s live-action Star Wars universe.<\/p>\n

The new animated series Ghostbusters: Night Shift is aiming to do the same for the world of proton packs and wise-cracking parapsychologists. Where Clone Wars bridged the gap between Lucas\u2019 prequels and the original trilogy, Night Shift \u2014 which Netflix teased at the Annecy film festival last week<\/a> \u2014 slots into the gap between Ivan Reitman\u2019s 1980s originals and the 2020s sequels Ghostbusters: Afterlife (Jason Reitman) and Gil Kenan\u2019s Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.\u201d (Paul Feig\u2019s 2016 gender-swapped reboot \u2014 a film whose release was overshadowed by a torrent of misogynistic online abuse <\/a>before disappointing commercially<\/a> \u2014 has been exorcised from the Ghostbusters canon). <\/p>\n

Set in New York in 1994, five years after the original Ghostbusters melted the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man to save the city, the series fills in an unexplored era of the franchise while introducing a new generation of Ghostbusters, supernatural villains and paranormal mythology, figures that could eventually migrate into future live-action films.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s only important if you\u2019re concerned about space and time,\u201d Jason Reitman jokes when asked how important it is the new series fits into the official Ghostbusters timeline. \u201cNight Shift is very specifically set within the larger context of the Ghostbusters stories. You\u2019ll be able to watch the movies, come into the show, watch more movies and never miss a beat. It all links up.\u201d<\/p>\n

The series, produced by Sony Pictures Animation, Netflix<\/a>, and Ghostcorps, with animation production by Flying Bark Productions (Stranger Things: Tales from \u201985)<\/a>, comes from the creative team behind Afterlife and Frozen Empire. Reitman and Kenan are executive producing, alongside the feature sequels\u2019 producer Amie Karp and original Ghostbuster Dan Aykroyd. Ben Hibon and Elliott Kalan are showrunners.<\/p>\n

The idea for the series first emerged while Reitman and Kenan were writing Afterlife. \u201cWe gave ourselves a mystery to solve,\u201d Reitman says. \u201cWe thought of this young girl who found a proton pack in a barn, and we were trying to figure out who she was, how\u2019d she wind up there, how did this proton pack get there.\u201d That naturally led to another question: \u201cWait a second, what about that whole decade in between? What happened in the \u201990s? That was the birth of this show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"'Ghostbusters:\u2018Ghostbusters: Night Shift\u2019 Concept Art<\/p>\n

For Kenan, a trained animator whose first feature was 2006\u2019s Monster House, the appeal of animation wasn\u2019t simply that it allowed bigger ghosts or stranger worlds, but that the medium offered room to tell stories the films couldn\u2019t. \u201cWe started to watch [1980s\/90s cartoon] The Real Ghostbusters,\u201d he says. \u201cIt actually became more than just inspiration for those films. It made us see the extraordinary possibility that Ghostbusters stories have when you stretch your elbows out a little bit. A series allows you to tell a character story, or character stories, with more space.\u201d<\/p>\n

The affection for The Real Ghostbusters remains. The Saturday morning series, which ran from 1986 to 1991, was gleefully surreal, sending Venkman, Egon and company into increasingly bizarre supernatural adventures unconstrained by live-action budgets. But in tone, the new show is more closely modeled on Ivan Reitman\u2019s original films. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnyone who\u2019s coming into this animated series thinking they\u2019re about to watch the series from the \u201980s, oh, are they in for a surprise,\u201d says Reitman. \u201cIt is funnier, it is scarier. The visuals are incredibly dynamic, and it does the thing that that first film in \u201984 did, which is you come in thinking, okay, maybe I\u2019ll have a laugh, and then it spooks the shit out of you.\u201d<\/p>\n

That balance between comedy and horror became the guiding principle for the production. \u201cThe magic trick of the first film is that it was genuinely terrifying and laugh-out-loud funny,\u201d Kenan says. \u201cThat is unique in the history of modern film. When you try to distill what the DNA of Ghostbusters is, it\u2019s that tone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hibon says the filmmakers deliberately resisted recreating the look of the old cartoon. \u201cI think we all loved it in maybe different ways,\u201d he says of The Real Ghostbusters. \u201cIt is so inventive, it\u2019s so different, it has such a great identity. Maybe we are reining it in a little bit because this series is canon, and we\u2019re trying to stay within the realm of maybe the movies. But at the same time it\u2019s animation, so we\u2019re still able to really expand and explore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead of looking to Saturday morning television, Hibon and Kalan say they drew inspiration from New York itself \u2014 specifically the New York of 1994.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew York is both at the same time the greatest city on the face of the earth, and also disgusting,\u201d says Kalan. \u201cWe want the show to feel like you\u2019re there in the city in the 1990s, this very special time when New York hadn\u2019t been cleaned up yet, when it was still a city where pretty much anything could happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

That period also defines the protagonists. \u201cOur characters are in their early 20s,\u201d Kalan says. \u201cThey\u2019re at that stage in their life where they\u2019re figuring out what is my life going to be? New York is the kind of city that it chews you up and spits you out, but sometimes it spits you out as a Ghostbuster.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the series embraces the freedom of CG animation, Hibon says its visual language comes less from cartoons than from live-action cinema. \u201cThere\u2019s definitely a film language,\u201d he says, citing horror photography, lighting and camera work from the era. The goal, Kalan adds, is \u201ca show set in the \u201990s, but made now so while we want to reflect that time it will still feel very modern.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether Night Shift ultimately becomes Ghostbusters\u2019 answer to The Clone Wars will depend on whether audiences embrace its new characters as readily as Star Wars fans did figures like Ahsoka, Captain Rex or General Grievous, animated originals who made the jump to live-action fare<\/a>. <\/p>\n

But Reitman says the goal was never simply to extend the franchise\u2019s timeline. It was to hand it to a new generation of storytellers capable of expanding the universe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel very protective of Ghostbusters, for all the obvious reasons,\u201d says Reitman. \u201cThe really exciting part of this process for me has been to pass the torch and see two storytellers [take Ghostbusters] to places that I had never even imagined. Elliott\u2019s understanding of the language of Ghostbusters \u2014 when he writes, he sounds like Aykroyd \u2014 and Ben\u2019s ability to create a Ghostbusters universe that audiences have literally never seen before, ghosts they\u2019ve never imagined before, equipment they\u2019ve never seen before, and a version of New York that has never had Ghostbusters in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

For longtime fans, Reitman promises discoveries rather than nostalgia. \u201cAudiences who already love Ghostbusters, they\u2019re about to see a version of the story they\u2019ve never seen before. And for anyone who\u2019s never watched any of Ghostbusters, I can\u2019t imagine a better entrance to the franchise.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe connective tissue is there,\u201d says Kenan. \u201cWhether you started with \u201984, whether you started with Afterlife, or whether this is your first time watching something for Ghostbusters. You\u2019re gonna have a great time watching the show.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Can Ghostbusters pull off a Lucas\/Filoni? In the early 2000s, in the wake of the commercially successful but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":565245,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[263],"tags":[746,235794,18,117,125489,19,1452,17,327,127],"class_list":["post-565244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-animation","tag-annecy-2026","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-ghostbusters","tag-ie","tag-international","tag-ireland","tag-movies","tag-netflix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565244\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}