More Images from Ghostbusters: Frozen Kingdom, Courtesy of Total Film

Movies

The promotional push for Ghostbusters: Frozen Kingdom has been more hardcore than I’d have anticipated. Aside from the expected trailers and posters, Sony has been releasing plenty of images from the movie, with the previous batch coming from Empire magazine. This new release is through another British film magazine, Total Film, and it has images of the new crew introduced in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the old guard we all love – including Annie Potts’ Janine Melnitz – and this movie’s villain, an ice-themed specter. Ghostbusters: Frozen Kingdom will hit theaters on March 22, 2024, and you can see the new images below, courtesy of Total Film and its website, GamesRadar+:

The first picture reminds me of Alien, when they cut open the facehugger, and the acid blood burns through each floor of the ship. I don’t imagine that’s acid in Ghostbusters: Frozen Kingdom; it’s probably ectoplasm or something akin to that. But it does seem to be invoking the imagery of Alien – or maybe it’s just me. But it makes me wonder about whether this one will be relying on nostalgia as much as Afterlife did, and not just nostalgia for Ghostbusters. The other pictures are fine; I like seeing the Ghostbusters again and Janine getting in on the action, although it’ll never be the same without Harold Ramis’ Egon Spengler. The villain looks a bit off; I don’t know if it’s the CGI or the basic design, but he looks kind of like a withered old man more than an unholy monster, especially around the jawline. Maybe it’ll work better in the movie, and it’s often hard to tell how these things look in action from still images.

I’m a bit hot and cold on Ghostbusters: Frozen Kingdom; I’ve liked some of the things we’ve seen and heard during the publicity campaign, and I’m more interested than I was in the beginning. But this picture release made me wonder why Sony is going so hard on the advertising, especially with the images. Then, I remembered this week’s Open Bar – Last Orders on the Critical Drinker’s After Hours channel, where he looked up the box office returns for Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Afterlife grossed $204.3 million, which is not a lot for a film as big as this; it was profitable because it only had a $75 million budget, but it was hardly a blockbuster. There’s no confirmed budget for Frozen Kingdom yet, but if they go heavy on CGI – which it looks like they will, what with New York being covered in ice and Ecto-1 chasing the ghost of a marlin through the streets – and bigger parts for Billy Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Ernie Hudson, this one might need a lot more money to move into the black than its predecessor did. That means Sony has to get people excited, hence these images. It makes me wonder what Odin will be reporting when Ghostbusters: Frozen Kingdom arrives in a few weeks.

Thanks again to Total Film/GamesRadar+ for the pics!