Particle physicists and estranged friends Abby Yates and Erin Gilbert co-authored Ghosts from Our Past, a book detailing their paranormal investigations since high school.

Erin later disavowed the work, while Abby continues her research at the Kenneth P. Higgins Institute of Science in New York City, with engineering physicist Jillian "Holtz" Holtzmann as her partner.

MTA staffer Patty Tolan encounters a ghost in a subway terminal built under a haunted prison in Auburn and contacts the team.

They advertise their services with a "no ghosts allowed" logo that Holtz used based on a graffiti artist's defacement, and the name pundits have labeled them—"Ghostbusters".

Patty joins the team, providing expertise of New York City, personal protective equipment, and a repurposed hearse from her mortician uncle Bill Jenkins, named "Ecto-1".

Mad scientist and occultist Rowan North has triggered the supernatural events by attracting ghosts over Manhattan with self-developed ionizers that correspond to the Ghostbusters' technology, allowing him to experiment and create a dimensional vortex powered by turned PSI energy.

The group is brought to Mayor Bradley and his deputy Jennifer Lynch, who reveal that they and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) know of the city's supernatural activities.

Despite the city's fascination with the supernatural and lauding the Ghostbusters as heroes, the mayor's office continues to denounce them publicly but covertly funds their operations.

Brian Baumgartner, Justin Kirk, and Elizabeth Perkins have cameo appearances in the extended cut as hotel guest Frank the Mercado, city official Phil Hudson, and university professor Phyllis Adler respectively.

[15] Dan Aykroyd, who co-starred in and co-wrote the original films, said the studio was aware that "without Murray there may be nothing there" for a sequel, and was considering a way to introduce a new generation of Ghostbusters.

The story had the Ghostbusters finding a portal to an alternate dimension where "all the worst things about modern urban life" are "magnified"; traffic is stuck in perpetual gridlock, and nobody speaks the same language.

Ramis said the new film would feature the original Ghostbusters but introduce new characters in a script written by Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, co-writers of his 2009 comedy Year One.

Reitman, along with Murray, Aykroyd, and Ramis, had long-standing contracts in place with Columbia that effectively allowed any of them to veto the development of a Ghostbusters film.

[21] Murray told GQ that he felt the script written by Eisenberg and Stupnitsky was poor and "that dream just vaporized", but said that Columbia was pressuring him to make it.

[37] Feig said that Sony Pictures Entertainment's co-chairman Amy Pascal had been pushing for comedy writers to produce a script for a new Ghostbusters film for some time.

[38] In January 2015, Feig confirmed his intention to use Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones in the lead roles.

[58][59] The climactic Times Square sequence, which starts with the antagonist proclaiming, "Welcome to the glory days of New York City", used special effects to transform it into a bygone mix of stores, buildings and billboards dating back through the decades.

[60] Following a test done by stereoscopic supervisor Ed Marsh, Feig decided to take a different approach to the 3D effects, as the movie was letterboxed even in theaters, so that some objects, mostly regarding the ghosts manifesting themselves, would reach beyond the black bars.

[66] On its first day of release, the first trailer for the film collected 12,000 likes and 13,800 dislikes from YouTube viewers which, according to David Griner of Ad Week made it "one of the most polarizing in recent memory".

[69][70][71] ScreenCrush described the reaction as a campaign "to downvote [the film] into oblivion" by "a certain subset of people on the internet [with] an unhealthy fixation with hating on the Ghostbusters remake".

[76] In an interview with Mashable, Ivan Reitman said, "I think there's way too much talk about gender [when it comes to this film]", and "I think that many of the people who were complaining were actually lovers of the [original] movie, not haters of women".

[96][97] On July 19, Twitter suspended the account of then Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos, who had criticized Jones, allegedly for abusive behavior over the previous 48 hours.

[101] In 2018, while promoting the all-female led film Ocean's 8, Sandra Bullock said the reaction that Ghostbusters received was "unfair on a level that I can't even not be mad about talking about.

The filter, which features the Ghostbusters logo, allows users to shoot at the character Slimer with their front-facing cameras and a virtual proton pack.

[116][118][119] A representative of Sony found this loss estimate to be "way off": "With multiple revenue streams ... the bottom line, even before co-financing, is not even remotely close to that number".

The website's critical consensus reads, "Ghostbusters does an impressive job of standing on its own as a freewheeling, marvelously cast supernatural comedy—even if it can't help but pale somewhat in comparison with the classic original".

[138] J.R. Kinnard of PopMatters praised the performances and the lack of cynicism, but concluded "it feels like a safe, flavorless recipe prepared from gourmet ingredients".

[140] Mara Reinstein of US Weekly gave the film 2.5 out of 4, commending its actors but criticizing its "lazy script that takes forever to get going" and "uninspired" action sequences.

After its opening weekend, Sony's president of worldwide distribution, Rory Bruer, told TheWrap that "while nothing has been officially announced, there's no doubt in [his] mind [a sequel] will happen".

[116][118] Box office analyst Jeff Bock said: "I just can't fathom the creative talents behind it—Feig, McCarthy, Wiig, etc—slogging out another one when the reception to the first one was so mediocre".