Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire release date, cast, and everything you need to know about the Afterlife sequel
Jan. 30, 2024Get up to speed on Ghostbusters 4 before it hits the big screen
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Now, though, Carrie Coon’s Callie Spengler and Paul Rudd’s Gary Grooberson are returning to our screens in a matter of weeks – and they’ll be joined by some very familiar faces. Picking up shortly after Afterlife left off, we’re back in New York City over three decades after the events of the original Ghostbusters movies, and there’s a brand-new threat for the gang to deal with: an army of ghosts and averychilly summer.
If you’re not up to date with everything Ghostbusters 4 yet, it’s not too late to get up to speed. We’ve got it all here, from a full cast list, everything we know about the plot (including some exclusive quotes from the movie’s director), and a summary of the trailers released so far.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire release date
Unlike Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which saw Callie Spengler (the estranged daughter of OG Ghostbuster Egon Spengler) and her family start a new life in Oklahoma, Frozen Empire sees the gang return to where it all started: New York City. And, more specifically, a certain firehouse…
Speaking to Total Film, director and co-writer Gil Kenan explained, “The move to Oklahoma in Afterlife was very much by design. We knew we had to get away from New York City in order to recontextualize what it meant to ghost-bust and what it meant to be a Ghostbuster. We wanted to refocus the stories on a character’s arc; on the arc of the Spngler family and on Phoebe in particular. We needed to get away from the apparatus of ghostbusting in order to redefine it.
“Having done that, the next task was, ‘How do you take that discovery? How do you take the path that’s been laid out in front of our characters and force them to step into the ring? What does it mean to be a Ghostbuster? What does it mean to be a Ghostbuster in New York City? And specifically, what does it mean to be a Ghostbuster in New York City when the greatest threat ever facing the institution comes to bear?’ That’s this story.”
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Back in the Big Apple, some familiar faces have set up a secret lab for research to take their bustin' to the next level. Two generations of Ghostbusters must then team up when malevolent forces released by an ancient artifact threaten to send the world into a second Ice Age.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire sees the return of all the key Afterlife players – namely, Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, and Mckenna Grace. And, of course, the original gang is still bustin' away in NYC, so we’ll also see Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson back in their jumpsuits. Annie Potts and William Atherton will also reprise their roles from the ’80s classicc, as Janine and Walter Peck respectively.
A new movie does mean some new faces, though, including Kumail Nanjiani and Patton Oswalt, as well as James Acaster as an Egon Spengler-like inventor and Emily Alyn Lind in a still undisclosed role. You can see the whole cast, with character names, below.
The full-length trailer, which was released in January and is available to watch above, however, gives us a much better idea of what to expect. We get a glimpse at the mysterious object that’s the cause of this icy danger, as well as the “army of ghosts” descending on New York City that has the power to “scare people to death”. There’s also a sewer dragon (well, it looks like a dragon and it comes out of a sewer, anyway) that the team will be going up against.
For more, check out our guide to the rest of this year’s most excitingmovie release dates.
I’m an Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering everything film and TV-related across the Total Film and SFX sections. I help bring you all the latest news and also the occasional feature too. I’ve previously written for publications like HuffPost and i-D after getting my NCTJ Diploma in Multimedia Journalism.
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