Zach Creggers Ghostbusters: Follow the new hire or receptionist as a normal Ghostbusters movie happens in the background…ngl that sounds kind of cool.
Hence why I said spin-off.
A spin-off allows you to use the universe as a jumping off point for a new story with new characters. It also gives Zach Cregger carte blanche and allows him to flex his own style within the ‘rules’ of the universe.
I’ll concede that there are times where a bit of a tonal shift does work to a spinoff’s advantage over the original, such as Angel versus Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Lower Decks to Star Trek: The Original Series/Next Generation/Deep Space Nine/Voyager (with the benefit being that as it’s an animated series, you can discount it if you so with), or The Good Fight and the Good Wife.
I’m still not convinced a Ghostbusters spinoff in the vein of Zach Cregger (or helmed by him), that leans more towards horror over comedy would be to the franchise’s benefit.
I can see such a film or TV series appealing to fans of more hard-core horror, but would it not be at the expense of watering down what makes Ghostbusters stand apart from other supernatural or horror films?
As the market is somewhat saturated with films (and to a lesser extent TV shows) in the harder/hard-core horror genre thanks to a sort of normalisation of torture ■■■■, of body horror like Human Centipede, and the poorest written and budgeted exampls of the genre being a dime-a-dozen, you have to work hard to really make a film in this genre stand out these days amongst its peers.
Does Ghostbusters genuinely benefit from either shifting completely, or dipping its toe into this market, or would it just be trying to get in on what’s currently popular in the cultural zeitgeist?
Anyway, if you want an example of why I feel Zach Cregger just isn’t a good fit for a Ghostbusters-like comedy, but is good for broader horror (though my personal jury’s still yet to review all the exhibits of his take on Resident Evil), is the scene where he has the zombies leaping off of the rooftops in Raccoon City.
It’s a visceral and memorable scene, but you could only really do something like that with Ghosts (or ghost-possessed inanimate objects) in a Ghostbusters film (because having ghosts possessiong people and walking them off buildings to splatter into massive puddles of gore and blood is not something that would be given the green light in a Ghostbusters movie), and as we’d know they’re not human bodies in this hypothetical Ghostbusters film, the scene would ultimately lose a good chunk of its heft.