It's Official! Bill Murray Returns to His Ghostbusters Role in Upcoming Sequel
He’s back.
30 years after last appearing as squad leader Peter Venkman in 1989’s Ghostbusters 2, Bill Murray is set to reprise his beloved role in the upcoming sequel Ghostbusters: Afterlife. The new movie stars Paul Rudd as a science teacher whose students find themselves in the middle of a ghostbusting mystery.
Though Murray, 69, made a cameo in the 2016 all-women Ghostbusters, he will be back as his parapsychologist character in the new movie directed by Jason Reitman, the son of original director Ivan Reitman.
His return was confirmed in a new interview with Vanity Fair, as were Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson’s returns as Ray Stantz and Winston Zeddemore.
But the trio will have to go on without their fourth member, the late Harold Ramis who died in 2014 at 69.
“Well, we are a man down. That’s the deal,” Murray told Vanity Fair. “And that’s the story that we’re telling, that’s the story they’ve written.”
Though the plot of the movie hasn’t been confirmed, the trailer hints at how Ramis’ death is explained.
Set 30 years after ghost sightings ended, the story follows Callie (The Leftovers’ Carrie Coon), a financially strapped mother who moves her two children — Phoebe (Captain Marvel‘s Mckenna Grace) and Trevor (Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard) to small-town Oklahoma, and an abandoned farmhouse left behind by her dead father.
His identity isn’t explicitly stated, but the Ghostbusters jumpsuit branded with the name “Dr. Egon Spengler” found by Phoebe in her grandfather’s secret lab seems to indicate that it’s the character played by the late Harold Ramis.
The kids learn about the discarded artifacts — including a P.K.E. Meter and one of those iconic ghost traps — thanks to teacher Mr. Grooberson (Paul Rudd). He was there when the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man terrorized Manhattan back in 1984 and is happy to educate Phoebe, Trevor and their pal (played by Logan Kim) about the past life of the Ghostbusters.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife opens in theaters July 10.
