It was first announced back in 2022 that Netflix would produce an animated Ghostbusters show alongside Afterlife scribes Jason Reitman (who also directed that film) and Gil Kenan (who helmed Frozen Empire). The series has been making progress in recent years, and it’s now known that the series is titled Ghostbusters: Night Shift and will debut in 2027. While there’s been excitement surrounding this GB show, I haven’t quite been completely sure about it. However, recent comments from the executive producers have me on board.
Like many people, I’m a big fan of animated series, and that includes cartoons tied to major, live-action movies. It makes sense for Ghostbusters to get another cartoon entry, but I’ve been wondering about the kind of tone the producers are going for. Humor is a given, but there’s been the question of how far the show will go on scares. Frights have been lightly teased, but the take that showrunner/EP Elliott Kalan shared at an event attended by SFX Magazine on CinemaBlend has me relieved about the scare factor:
This show is legit scary. When you are not laughing at Ghostbusters: Night Shift, you will be screaming. That is a warning!
When it comes to cartoons with tinges of horror, it’s hard to tell just how far producers will go in delivering spookier fare. Some beloved series are lighter on scares and heavier on laughs like Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! or Archie’s Weird Mysteries. Yet shows like The Real Ghostbusters and Courage the Cowardly Dog deliver truly ghastly creations. With that, I’m pleased to hear Night Shift is meant to fall into the latter category, with fellow EP Kenan also adding that they “wanted it to be dangerously funny, actually scary and 100% Ghostbusters.”
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It really does sound as though the creative team has put a lot of thought and effort into making sure they get the horror aspects right. Ben Hibon – another executive producer – also discussed the painstaking details that have gone into crafting the show’s monsters:
Throughout the series, our characters will face a great variety of different kinds of ghosts. In
early design work, we explored the whimsical and the absurd. We tried pushing features and playing with scale. We played with texture quality: transparency, the fleshy and the ethereal, but with one consistent prerogative – to really play up the scary side of our ghosts. The tension and danger are omnipresent. The atmosphere is heavy. The stakes are real and long lasting.
Back in the ‘80s, Real Ghostbusters delivered some very freaky villains, like Samhain, The Boogeyman and The Grundle. Those characters were actually so weird that Kenan used them for inspiration while working on Frozen Empire. Not only that, but TRG’s spinoff series, Extreme Ghostbusters, also birthed some freaky creatures Considering only a handful of youth-oriented animated series truly dive into terror in this day and age, it’s great that this new GB show will fall in line with its predecessors.
Night Shift is set in 1994 New York and centers on a new team of young heroes who find themselves in the position of having to defend the city from supernatural forces. Based on Kalan’s tease, this is an eclectic group that consists of “the goth, the punk, the kid, the
con-man, the scientists and the terror puppy.” And, yes, there really is a demonic dog-like creature on the show. So, needless to say, the creative team is crafting a lineup far different from what’s been seen before while maintaining the familiar New York landscape.
Make no mistake, though, as I also love this franchise for its humor, and I’m interested in seeing how the producing team balances those funnier elements with the spookier ones. Anyone who wants to see how this all comes together should grab a Netflix subscription by the time Ghostbusters: Night Shift premieres in 2027.
