Ghostbusters: Afterlife star Finn Wolfhard claims “every” scene in the 30-years-later followup to Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II is fused with comedy. In the direct sequel from Jason Reitman, son of original franchise director Ivan Reitman, Wolfhard plays girl and car-obsessed Trevor, a “dumb teenager” and newest resident of Summerville, Oklahoma alongside science whiz little sister Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and broke single mother Callie (Carrie Coon). The family has inherited the dusty house of Callie’s father — a founding member of the mostly forgotten Ghostbusters — and despite its story being fueled by the loss of a loved one, Wolfhard says Afterlife scares up plenty of laughs:
“Yeah, he’s a pretty dumb character,” Wolfhard admitted of his character when speaking to The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s not that he’s written dumb, he’s just a dumb teenager and totally naive. Everything is way over his head. He’s obsessed with cars and girls. So it’s really fun to play him.”
When addressing the largely lowkey first trailer in a podcast interview with Kevin Smith, Wolfhard said the film’s first footage intentionally held off on “the big stuff” — including its sense of humor, glimpsed when an earthquake forces Trevor and his family scurrying for safety beneath their dining room table. “Hey, remember that one summer we died under a table?”
“The trailer only showed some of it, but it’s a Ghostbusters movie so it’s a really funny film. Every scene has comedy in it,” Wolfhard told THR. “I’m excited for people to see more of the humor in the movie.”
Despite its wry sense of humor, Afterlife has “lots of emotion in it,” according to returning star Bill Murray, back as OG Ghostbuster Peter Venkman alongside Ernie Hudson’s Winston Zeddemore and Dan Aykroyd’s Ray Stantz. And with humor comes a lot of heart.
Afterlife possesses a “beautiful, heartfelt” screenplay that “takes the real DNA from the first two movies and transfers that directly to the third, the next generation,” Aykroyd said in a past interview with The Greg Hill Show, where Aykroyd added the Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan-penned film “hands the legacy off to a new generation of stars, and players, and actors, and characters.”
The new sequel is “gonna be scary, it’s gonna be thought-provoking, it’s gonna be very heartfelt,” added Aykroyd. “You’ll feel it, if you have loved ones that you miss and that you’ve lost, and you want to get back with. It’ll be very evocative that way.”
Also starring Annie Potts, Sigourney Weaver, and Paul Rudd, Ghostbusters: Afterlife opens July 10.
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