Ghostbusters 4 director promises fans that the sequel is "scary" as he teases new villain

Feb. 16, 2024



Exclusive: Filmmaker Gil Kenan teases the menacing new threat the Death Chill

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Speaking toSFX magazinein the new issue, which featuresDune 2on the cover, he reveals that you should expect both laughs and scares aplenty: “This is a scary Ghostbusters movie, I set out to go for the thrills. As a big-screen experience, I think it’s going to play like a scary, funny movie. The secret is that the scarier a scene is, the funnier the next joke is going to play. That’s the way that the pendulum swings with tone. Twisting that lever to make sure that the scares land is a way of making sure that the jokes are funnier.”

But who or what exactly is ‘the Death Chill’? Whilst Kenan and co. are keeping their cards close to their chests, we do know that it’s a mysterious specter that freezes over the city, killing people off purely through fear itself. We also know that it is unrelated to the series' previous big bad Gozer, with the director emphasizing that time is now over.

He adds: “We’ve moved past the mythology of Gozer, which defined Ghostbusters and was rekindled in Afterlife as a way to close that initial loop. We have finally freed ourselves to now introduce a whole new menace, and with that, we’ve created a new mythology and we’ve expanded how deep and how frightening and how dangerous a villain can be in one of these stories.”

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Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire releases in theaters on March 22. The above is just a snippet of our interview, available inthe latest issue of SFX magazine, which features Dune: Part Two on the cover and is available on newsstands from Wednesday, February 21. For even more from SFX, sign up to ournewsletter, which delivers all the latest exclusives straight to your inbox.

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Jack Shepherd is the former Senior Entertainment Editor of GamesRadar. Jack used to work at The Independent as a general culture writer before specializing in TV and film for the likes of GR+, Total Film, SFX, and others. You can now find Jack working as a freelance journalist and editor.

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