The animated spinoff is a classic TV experience. In the 1970s, you could eat your cereal while watching The New Adventures of Gilligan, a spinoff of Gilligan’s Island. In the ‘80s, Beetlejuice began as a movie, but found a second life as a cartoon. Men in Black had animated adventures on Kids’ WB in the ‘90s, and in the 2000s, the Star Wars animated spinoff series Star Wars: The Clone Wars was so successful that it sparked several of its own spinoffs, including the live-action series Ahsoka.
But 40 years ago, one animated spinoff took the often-lazy cash-in medium to new heights, when The Real Ghostbusters added a monster-of-the-week element to the classic 1984 movie Ghostbusters. It turned out to be a fan favorite, and all these years later, Netflix is reviving the formula as part of a new wave of spinoff series.
