Spook Central: The Ghostbusters Companion - Established August 1996 By Paul Rudoff
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Filmation's Ghostbusters

This page will contain *some* information and links about Filmation's Ghostbusters live-action and animated television series. Although I don't hate either series, I'm not a big fan. Since I do come across stuff releated to the series, I needed a place on the site to put it. However, don't expect full in-depth coverage for either Filmation series.

Live-Action | Animated

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"The Ghost Busters" 1975 (Live-Action)

Outside Links

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"Filmation's Ghostbusters" 1986 (Animated)

French Filmation's Ghostbusters Theme Song - Cover Art and Lyrics
If anyone actually has this album and can provide the song, more pictures, and information, I'd be happy to hear it. The best that can be done right now to hear the song are these videos of the Show Opening with the French song (which only includes the first half of the song, up to the music break as listed on the lyrics page):
* Flash (Daily Motion) - Streaming / Download (doesn't have Filmation logo at start)
* Flash (Daily Motion) - Streaming / Download (doesn't have Filmation logo at start)

Outside Links

Outside Video Links

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In this excerpt from R.J. Carter's interview with Filmation founder Lou Scheimer (published June 11, 2007), we learn a little more about the rights issues between Filmation and Columbia Pictures.

One of the most recent releases from the Filmation vaults is the live-action Ghost Busters series with Forrest Tucker, Larry Storch and Bob Burns. Did people just forget that you had done Ghost Busters before Ivan Reitman did the Dan Aykroyd / Bill Murray comedy?

Well, I think they ripped us off. Fact is, when I first heard of it -- I read it in the trades, I can't remember which trade it was -- I said, "That's ridiculous. That's our show. That's our premise, that's our concept.

We got in touch with Columbia, and I had our attorneys call them. We met with them, and they said, "Well, this was an animated show on Saturday morning," and I said, "Huh-uh." He said, "What do you mean, 'huh-huh'?" And I said, "Live!" And he said, "Uh-oh. We've got a problem."

Obviously a deal was worked out, but how did that carry over into the animation side, because for a while there were two competing shows, Filmation's Ghostbusters and the so-called Real Ghostbusters.

It was weird. We did the live series in 1975, and the animated series was in the 80s. What happened was, we made a deal with Columbia to give them the rights to do the picture, and we got $500,000 for the use, and I made a dumb move. Oh, and we got 1% of the profit from the pictures. It was amazing. I think they spent something like $65 million, and they grossed something like $150 million, and they never had any profits. That's when I was exposed to the Hollywood accounting practices. (They weren't practices -- they were well practiced.) And I didn't make a deal with them that excluded the animation. I never thought of it.

Years after the live picture was released, Columbia decided to do an animated feature. And it was a very nice guy running Columbia, Herman Rush, who had turned out earlier in my history had been an agent for us. So I called Herman and suggested to him, "Why not do something together. We've got rights, you've got rights." And our parent company then, Westinghouse, said, "Oh, we don't need them." And I said, "Bad idea. I think we need them. Because they'll have one, we'll have one, and nobody will know what's going on." And as it turned out, that's essentially what happened.

I think there was a whole generation out there that was only familiar with the feature film, and saw the Filmation cartoon as some sort of copy.

You know, the sadness was, we had the gorilla as part of our original show. They put a black man in the team, and I got a phone call from a nice man -- I can't remember where it was -- and he was horrified that we had taken the Columbia picture and turned the African-American into an ape. And I tried to explain, "No, you don't understand, that was in our original picture." It was sad. I couldn't convince that guy that we hadn't somehow done something terrible.

By the way, I've never told anyone that before. You're right, there may be things I didn't tell anybody yet.

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Ghostbusters copyright © 1984 Columbia Pictures Industries Inc. All rights reserved.