Just a few years after Paul Feige’s Ghostbusters reboot ignited a truly regrettable culture war regarding whether or not women should be in reboots (or something), Hollywood is headed back to the “Who you gonna call?” well. Ghostbusters: Afterlife is helmed by Jason Reitman (son of the original film’s director) and stars Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard and a few of the original stars like Bill Murray and Sigourney Weaver. That’s a pretty likeable cast, however tired you might be of this franchise, and now we’re getting a chance to see them in action. Also in action: the kaiju-like Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, who was the final boss of the first movie and became an iconic horror movie villain. He’s apparently back in Afterlife except he’s tiny. And there’s tons of him.
Sweet. Mischievous. Savage. 🔥 Mini-Pufts are out of the bag, don't miss #Ghostbusters: Afterlife only in theaters this fall. pic.twitter.com/WtIMu4felL
— Ghostbusters (@Ghostbusters) April 7, 2021
Well, you can’t help but get the feeling that some exec saw Baby Groot and Baby Yoda and figured they could milk that same cow for Ghostbusters. This clip gets a few extra points for subverting the cute factor by making the little guys kinda creepy, but it’s still easy to see how this could be a merchandise boom if all goes well.
Stay-Puft Marshmallows were created for the Ghostbusters franchise by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis and were such a hit that they became an actual marshmallow brand. Which begs an interesting question: how many marshmallow brands do we need out there? It sort of seems like if you’ve tried one marshmallow, you’ve tried them all. Does anyone have a ranking of their all-time favorite marshmallow brands, the way we do for different kinds of, say, peanut butter or root beer? This is just one of many questions that will probably not be answered by Ghostbusters: Afterlife when it comes to theaters in November.