Original Ghostbusters star Rick Moranis will not reprise his role as awkward accountant Louis Tully in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, the threequel following 1984’s Ghostbusters and 1989’s Ghostbusters II. The new film from writer-director Jason Reitman focuses on a new cast — mom Callie (Carrie Coon) and her two children, Phoebe (Mckenna Grace) and Trevor (Finn Wolfhard), who are joined by seismologist and schoolteacher Mr. Grooberson (Paul Rudd) — following the death of Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis). Aside from Moranis, surviving Ghostbusters cast mates Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, Annie Potts and Bill Murray will reprise their original roles in what is essentially Ghostbusters III.

According to Vanity Fair, who visited the film’s set in September, Moranis will not return for the decades-later sequel. Moranis has largely withdrawn from acting, last reprising his famed Bob McKenzie role in Bob & Doug McKenzie’s Two-Four Anniversary in 2007. As of 2020, Moranis’ last credited role came in ABC sitcom The Goldbergs, where he briefly reprised his Spaceballs role as Dark Helmet in a voice-only cameo.

 

In 2015, Moranis revealed he turned down a cameo appearance in the Paul Feig-directed Ghostbusters reboot. Set outside the mainline Ghostbusters continuity revisited in Afterlife, the 2016 reboot featured the surviving Ghostbusters stars in different roles, including a zany cab driver played by Aykroyd and a supernatural debunker played by Murray.

 

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