Happy Death Day / Freaky director Christopher Landon is trying to do something in the classic Amblin style with his new movie We Have a Ghost, and we’ll have the chance to see how this experiment has turned out when the film is released through the Netflix streaming service on February 24th. In the meantime, Empire has unveiled the first image from We Have a Ghost, which offers a look at the characters played by Anthony Mackie (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) and David Harbour (Stranger Things). You can check it out at the bottom of this article.
Based on author Geoff Manaugh’s “socially mediated ghost story” Ernest, which was published on Vice.com in October of 2017 (you can still read it on Vice at THIS LINK), We Have a Ghost has the following synopsis: Kevin and his family find a ghost named Ernest haunting their new home and get turned into overnight social media sensations. But when Kevin and Ernest go rogue to investigate the mystery of Ernest’s past, they become a target of the CIA.
Also in the cast are Tig Notaro (Army of the Dead), Jennifer Coolidge (American Pie), Jahi Di’Allo Winston (Charm City Kings), Erica Ash (Legacies), Isabella Russo (HBO’s Crashing), Niles Fitch (This Is Us), Faith Ford (Murphy Brown), and Steve Coulter (The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It).
Manaugh’s short story begins
with Jimmy Kimmel asking his TV audience if it wants to see a real ghost. That would be Ernest, so named by the homeowner who discovered him because the apparition looks a bit like Ernest Borgnine. The homeowner, Frank, begins filming his housebound ghost, and sending out the results to the world through social media. The spirit is mostly harmless, confused by his exploitation, but Ernest becomes a global viral sensation.
He conscripts high school senior Kevin to be part of a series of dinner parties held in the house to cash in on the ghost. This takes a sketchy turn when the teen, and the ghost, turn up missing, endangering Frank’s plans to monetize.
Landon enjoyed taking the Amblin approach to We Have a Ghost because “I really wanted to flex certain muscles that I felt like I had, but I hadn’t been able to use yet. One of those being this big, sweeping, emotional story that really pays off at the end.” He added that Harbour’s ghost character doesn’t remember who he was in life and isn’t able to speak, so he has to rely on his expressions and movements. “[David and I] talked about how underneath all of the sadness and memory loss, there were still the seeds of a man who was really loving, a little mischievous, and wily. I liked this idea that Ernest was this beat-down, tax-accountant-looking kind of guy.“
We Have a Ghost was produced by Dan Halsted, along with Marty Bowen and Isaac Klausner of Temple Hill. Manaugh and Landon serve as executive producers alongside John Fischer, Korey Budd, and Nathan Miller.
Are you looking forward to watching We Have a Ghost on Netflix? Let us know by leaving a comment below. I’ll be checking it out next month.
Here’s the first image: