GB: Afterlife, there were clues.

-or-

Ghosts of franchise future past.

So, in "The history of GB:Afterlife exposed!" I said...

Jason Reitman says he had the earliest ideas for Afterlife a decade ago, then he realized Phoebe had to be Egon's granddaughter right after Harold Ramis died, which was 2014, and he had Sony execs secretly looking at the first draft of the script in 2016.

So!! I went back to my 2016 posts, and there were faint clues.

In "The Ghostbusters of Christmas future" Sony actually laid out their future plans for the franchise.

Even if vaguely.

The animated movie, a live-action one with Channing Tatum that I can only assume would have been "21 Jump Street" parody style, an animated series called "Ghostbusters: Ecto-Force", and a live-action movie that was so super-duper top-secret, I called it "Ghostbusters: Who The Hell Knows?".

There's no doubt in my mind now that "GB:Who The hell Knows?" was/is Afterlife.

Nothing else adds up, and we know now that Afterlife was in development as far back as 2016.

From the "Christmas future" link....

Then there's a mystery live-action film that's being written as we speak.

Nothing is known about this at all, but Reitman says this exists on top of the Tatum one, so it's not the Tatum one.

And if it were a straight GB16 sequel, I think he might have said so.

I infer that this comes right after the animated one.

Now that we know this was Afterlife, it makes it even weirder that the Channing Tatum one was also being developed as a second reboot-verse from ATC.

And the animated film and TV show seem like they were third and fourth reboot-iverses.

Why all the reboot bubbles?

Why multiverse?

Were they eventually going to tie it all together like Spider-verse?

Why did they think audiences wanted to see anything but Afterlife?

Why this weird strategy they were on?

Who sold them on this?

Well, it all seems to have died off, and Afterlife sequels are taking priority.

Maybe the multiverse strategy was a "throw everything at the wall, and see what sticks" approach, and once Jason pitched Afterlife, they were loathe to let all that development go by the wayside.

Maybe multiverse wasn't the exact plan, maybe these were just the pitches they had thrown at them, and none of the individual writers/directors felt obligated to be in continuity with anyone else. 

Maybe it's as simple as that.

But then.....why have them all in simultaneous development??

Pick the best one, and go with it.

That's what ended up happening anyway, by the bullshit takes falling aside.

Also from the link....

A third GB crew? Who? Who??? Who, dammit, who?? ARGH!!

Maybe the belated torch pass to Oscar?

No way to know, but it's driving me crazy.

A torch pass to Egon's granddaughter.

I was in the ballpark with Oscar.

I made the same guess here.

So!! Are these projects all truly gone?

Or have they been pushed to a distant back burner?

Or...and here's my tinfoil hat theory...maybe they were all Argos.

Like, Jason Reitman lacked confidence in himself, so Sony made up these fake movies to re-assure him there were backup plans.

And maybe Paul Fieg was a pawn sacrifice to make one of those movies for real to further lure Jason into trying.

I know if I were a chosen one, I'd take some serious tricking into believing it.

Wherever the truth lies, I'm never going to hold my breath waiting or these other projects to materialize.

Jason Reitman is clearly the franchise's future.