Jason Reitman Talks About Making That Special Final Scene in GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE and Who He Consulted Along the Way

Ghostbusters: Afterlife was a great sequel film in the Ghostbusters franchise. It had its own brand new story and characters, and it did a great job of giving the fans some awesome throwback moments while completing a beautiful arc and giving fans a glimmer of a future sequel. One scene in particular was so lovely and was a tough one for director Jason Reitman to execute. He knew what he wanted to create, so he consulted a key group of people along the way.

Reitman explained the process of bringing back the late Harold Ramis’ character, Egon Spengler, in a recent interview with Empire, saying:

“The first person that ever read the script was my father, and after my father it was the Ramis family. It was Harold’s widow, Erica, and daughter Violet, who I grew up knowing—we were both on the set of the original back in ‘83. I talked to them about what we wanted to do, how we were going to do it. They came to set, and they viewed visual effects that came to the editing room. They’re the first people to ever actually see the movie. So they were part of this movie from start to finish and I think they were aware of how much I wanted to honor Harold. Egon was my favorite Ghostbuster. This is a Spengler story, and this movie is dedicated to him in every way.”

But even once you know what you want to do, moving forward and making it happen is a whole different thing. Reitman went on:

“So the real question was ‘how do we pull this off?’ Anyone who enjoys movies has now seen examples of virtual characters that really work and virtual characters that are difficult to look at. It’s one thing to see in the middle of a movie, where it kind of comes and goes. It’s another thing if the whole climax of the movie will be decided on whether or not you believe these two people are hugging each other, that a daughter is forgiving her father and saying goodbye to him. And that these Ghostbusters, who have gone through this misunderstanding and been broken apart, get to stand next to each other one more time and bust a ghost.”

The care they put into this scene really shone through, and it was a beautiful part of the movie.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife is still in some theaters, and it will be available digitally on January 4 and on Blu-ray and 4K on February 1st.