STACK #237 July 2024

MOVIE FEATURE

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STACK caught up with Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire director Gil Kenan in an editing suite at Sony Pictures Studios in Los Angeles. Words Gill Pringle K enan ( Monster House, City of Ember ) will never forget his dad taking him to see the 1984 original

Vigo

home and save the world from a second Ice Age. “This villain - whose name is Garaka - is a much more dangerous threat than we've ever encountered in a Ghostbusters story,” says Kenan. “He's a killer with the power to use the fear that we all have of the unknown, to destroy us from the inside out. And he can do this to a person, to a community... to a city. So we have some real danger to confront,” adds Kenan, who showed STACK a sneak peek of some of the huge scenes when we chatted in his editing room at Sony Studios in Los Angeles. Directing his heroes was a real pinch-me moment - even if it was somewhat akin to herding cats. With only six days when the entire cast - young and old - shared the screen, Kenan had to work swiftly. “Those moments are incredibly challenging as a director, because these are people who you love and respect, but you need them

Ghostbusters at Hollywood’s famed Grauman’s Theatre when he was just eight years old. “That movie was like a crosshairs aimed at me as an impressionable and movie obsessed boy. I went gaga for it. It terrified me, it made me laugh - although I’m not sure I understood all the jokes. There were some adult jokes, but I could tell they were funny. And it felt dangerous too, with a sense of not quite knowing where everything was heading,” he recalls. Fast forward four decades, the 47-year old is just as wide-eyed directing the franchise’s fifth film, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire , which takes audiences right back to the heart and spirit of the original. A sequel to 2021’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife ,

The original 1984 movie was written as a vehicle for Eddie Murphy and John Belushi. John Candy also turned down the role of Lewis Tully, which went to Rick Moranis, because he did not understand the character. DYK?

Frozen Empire sees the descendants of Ramis’ Egon Spengler - portrayed by Carrie

all to do the exact right thing at the same time,” recalls the director, who is also excited to reintroduce original characters played by Annie Potts and William Atherton to this new story. “Those moments are very humbling. I started out my

original Ghostbusters have now developed a top-secret

Coon, Finn Wolfhard, and McKenna Grace, alongside Paul Rudd - arrive in New York, having now embraced their legacy as Ghostbusters. And who doesn’t long to see

research lab to take ghostbusting to the

next level. But their fledgling

directing career as somebody who just went to the movie theatre and loved movies and

ghostbusting enthusiasm is soon dampened when faced with a powerful death-chilling force unwittingly unleashed when Kumail Nanjiani’s Nadeem brings an ancient artefact into Ray’s occult shop. Ghostbusters new and old must now unite to protect their

the adorable Spengler family driving through Manhattan in the classic ECTO-1 and rocking up at the iconic New York City firehouse which still serves as the Ghostbusters HQ? Teaming up with Murray’s Peter Venkman, Aykroyd’s Ray Stantz, and Ernie Hudson’s Winston Zeddemore, the family learn how the

wanted to find a way to be one of the people who told stories on the screen. And I still feel that way, so when I'm looking at the monitor, I feel like the kid who saw Ghostbusters in 1984 and I feel very fortunate.”

• Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is out Jul 3

26 JULY 2024

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