Last month, IndieWire‘s Courtney Howard mentioned in a review of Ghostbusters: Afterlife that the “metal-masticating, corpulent blue ghost named Muncher” was “voiced by Josh Gad“, a piece of casting news that wasn’t officially confirmed until just last week, when director Jason Reitman discussed Gad’s involvement with the film during an interview with IGN.
The IGN interview can be seen below, but here’s a transcript of the Gad portion, courtesy of the folks at GhostbustersNews.com:
IGN: “Everybody knows Josh Gad’s love of the Ghostbusters … we’ll just say that he is a vocal presence in this film. Just curious, was that a gift or an ask, because Josh is not afraid to ask when he’d like to participate in something.”
REITMAN: “Josh and I ran into each other on the Sony lot, and I was like ‘Hey, do you want to come voice this ghost?’ He was like ‘yes,’ and he literally just walked in the room. We were literally in a room at the time, he walked right in, he started doing sounds, and that is where the sound of Muncher came from.”
Ghostbusters: Afterlife is set to reach theatres on November 19th. Written by Reitman and Gil Kenan, the film stars Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, and Mckenna Grace as
a family with single mom Callie and her two kids, Trevor and Phoebe, who move into a beaten-down farmhouse in Oklahoma only to discover that there’s something strange in the neighborhood. Unexplained quakes shake the town. There’s an old mine nearby that bears the name of Ivo Shandor, who built the Manhattan high-rise in the 1984 film that channeled the forces of evil.
Paul Rudd plays “a local teacher who’s been documenting the unexplained phenomena, befriending Callie and her kids, and helping make the connection between the current weirdness and the events of three decades before”. Also in the cast are Bokeem Woodbine, Tracy Letts, and Oliver Cooper, with Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, and Annie Potts reprising their roles from the first Ghostbusters (watch it it HERE) and Ghostbusters II (watch that one HERE).
Jason Reitman’s father Ivan Reitman (who directed the first two movies) produced Ghostbusters: Afterlife, with Aykroyd serving as executive producer alongside Jason Blumenfeld, Michael Beugg, Aaron L. Gilbert, Jason Cloth, and Kenan.
Our own Chris Bumbray already had the chance to watch Ghostbusters: Afterlife and gave the film an 8/10 review you can read at THIS LINK.
This isn’t Josh Gad’s first run-in with the Ghostbusters. In June of 2020 he hosted a virtual Ghostbusters reunion on his YouTube series Reunited Apart.