Jason Reitman Says “Ghostbusters ”Movies Stopped in the '80s Because Director Dad Ivan Reitman 'Never Understood Sequels'

Director Jason Reitman says his father Ivan Reitman’s disinterest in sequels may have been why the Ghostbusters franchise languished for more than three decades.

“My dad never understood sequels,” Jason, 47, said of his director dad on the most recent episode of Neal Brennan’s Blocks podcast. “My dad was like, ‘I don’t know why people want to return to this stuff.’ ”

Ivan Reitman, of course, directed 1984’s Ghostbusters as well as the beloved comedy’s 1989 sequel, Ghostbusters II. But according to his son, Ivan was less interested in continuing the franchise than in telling new stories, as he did in 1988’s Twins, 1990’s Kindergarten Cop and 1993’s Dave, among other films.

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Before his 2022 death at the age of 75, however, Ivan did return to the Ghostbusters world as a producer on both Paul Feig’s 2016 all-female reboot and Jason's 2021 legacy sequel Ghostbusters: Afterlife. But according to Jason, his dad had some notes about the film’s inclusion of some of the ghouls from the 1984 original.

“When I wrote Afterlife, and you meet this girl, and she, like, goes out to Oklahoma, and she finds a proton pack, and my dad’s like, ‘This is great,’ ” Jason told Brennan. “And then terror dogs showed up, which is the same thing as ’84, and he’s like, ‘Why Gozer? Why do we need to go back?’ He’s just like, ‘Can I just have a new story?’ ”

“I think it’s one of the reasons the Ghostbusters franchise didn’t flourish, like, consistently over decades is cause my dad, after Ghostbusters was like, ‘I’m gonna go do Twins,’ ” the Juno and Saturday Night director said of his dad. “He made Ghostbusters II and then there’s nothing for years.”

Related: Dan Aykroyd Says He Doesn’t Think the OG Ghostbusters Actors Will Continue in the Franchise: ‘They Got a Whole New Cast’

Jason pointed to a particular oddity from the 1989 sequel to illustrate his dad’s approach.

“This is how much my dad cared about sequels: on the Ghostbusters car in Ghostbusters II, it has the [Ghostbusters II logo],” he explained. “That doesn’t make any sense. I asked him years later, I was like, ‘Why does the Ghostbusters movie logo for the sequel appear on Ecto-1? Are they aware that they’re in a sequel? Is that why they have the Ghostbusters ghost with a two on the side of their physical car?’ ”

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“My dad just was like, ‘Yeah, that was probably a mistake,’ ” Jason continued. “Like, he just didn’t [care].”

“That thing that people love about Marvel, where every part of that franchise, whether it’s a lunchbox or a comic book, is touching on a collective story,” he added, “that is the opposite of my father. My father was just like, ‘I just wanna go tell a new story.’ ”

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