Ghostbusters will be getting a new cartoon series in 2018, Sony Pictures revealed recently. The cartoon will be produced by Sony Pictures Animation in collaboration with director Ivan Reitman’s new Ghostbusters film company Ghost Corps. The cartoon series will feature a future setting, so won’t feature the Ghostbusters from the upcoming reboot.
Sony released an official synopsis for the animated TV show:
A brand new animated television series, Ghostbusters: Ecto Force, will further expand the Ghostbusters cinematic universe and focus on a new generation of Ghostbusters in the year 2050 who capture ghosts around the world with help from local teams—and some very cool gear!
Of course, this isn’t the first time Ghostbusters has had a cartoon series without the film Ghostbusters. The 1997 animation series Extreme Ghostbusters only featured one of the movie Ghostbusters (Egon Spengler); the rest were new characters: sarcastic slacker Eduardo Rivera (Rino Romano), mechanic Roland Jackson (Alfonso Ribiero), extreme sports fan Garrett Miller (Jason Marsden) and goth Kylie Griffin (Tara Charendoff).
That said, the original Ghostbusters still had a cartoon featuring the Ghostbusters from the film before they decided to introduce a new team. 1991’s The Real Ghostbusters featured Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler and Winston Zeddemore as the main characters, albeit without the live-action actors voicing their cartoon counterparts. Instead, David Coulier was the main voice of Peter Venkman (Lorenzo Music previously voiced him for the first two seasons), Maurice LaMarche voiced Egon Spengler (later reprising the role for Extreme Ghostbusters), Frank Welker was cast as both Ray Stantz and Slimer and Winston Zeddemore was voiced by Arensio Hall for three seasons before Buster Jones took over from season four.
It is therefore a curious decision to make a Ghostbusters cartoon with a new team before the current crew get one of their own. The original idea for the 1984 Ghostbusters had a future setting so maybe Ivan Reitman feels now is the right time to explore a futuristic Ghostbusters?
There are also plans for a Ghostbusters shared universe similar to the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) so it is possible this new team will operate similar to how Agents of SHIELD works as a television counterpart to the Marvel films. Maybe we’ll see some of the ghosts from the 2016 movie cross over to Ecto-Force? Maybe we might even get a live-action adaptation some point down the line that would allow the future team to meet the 2016 Ghostbusters via a time travel mechanic?
An interesting concept in the synopsis is the idea of the future team battling ghosts from around the world. It seems like we can expect the future Ghostbusters to do some globe-trotting, so could we see ghosts haunting London or the Australian Outback? The Ghostbusters taking on the ghost of Winston Churchill would be suitably barmy for what will likely be an eccentric kids’ television show.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though. The 2016 Ghostbusters reboot still has to be a success for the Ecto-Force cartoon to actually happen. Whilst it has been officially announced by Sony, if the Ghostbusters film flops then I expect Ecto-Force will be cancelled before it has even had a chance to air. Let’s hope the answer to the question ‘Who ya gonna call?’ will be ‘Melissa McCarthy‘ from the cinema-going public and not ‘someone else’.
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