Trailer
Plot summary
Sam Wheat and Molly Jensen share a loft in Manhattan. He works at a bank alongside his friend and co-worker Carl Bruner, and she makes ceramic art. Sam knows the passwords for several large bank accounts. Walking home from a movie one night, the couple is stopped by a mugger, Willie Lopez. A shot goes off in the struggle, and Sam chases the man down the street before turning back. He finds Molly holding his body and realizes he has died. A light appears for him and fades when he stays with her. Invisible and unable to touch anything, Sam keeps watch over Molly as she grieves. Only one person hears him: Oda Mae Brown, a medium who has never reached the dead, and he pesters her into helping him.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Ghost (1990)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Bruce Willis turned down the role of Sam Wheat because he did not understand the script. He later called himself a "knucklehead" for declining and said he wished he had worked with Moore again.
- Zucker initially refused to consider Swayze for Sam, so Rubin pitched the project to Swayze behind Zucker's back, after seeing him talk about his late father in an interview with Barbara Walters. Zucker changed his mind once Swayze auditioned.
- For the film's effects, VFX supervisor Richard Edlund combined the workprint footage of Swayze with elements shot on an Oxberry animation stand and things like an endoscope of Christmas tinsel, blending them together with Quantel's "Harry" video-compositing system.
- The pottery wheel scene has been parodied again and again: in The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear, executive produced by Jerry Zucker and directed by his brother David Zucker, in the Wallace and Gromit short A Matter of Loaf and Death, in Two and a Half Men, and in Euphoria, where Rue Bennett and Jules Vaughn recreate it.
- Demi Moore and Bruce Willis were married when Ghost and Die Hard 2 occupied the number one and number two spots at the box office. No other such couple managed it again until Deadpool & Wolverine and It Ends with Us in 2024.
- The interior of Sam and Molly's loft is a reproduction of the home and studio of artist Michele Oka Doner, built from plans she provided because she declined to allow filming in her own loft. It was reconstructed in an unused loft nearby in her Soho neighborhood, down to the radiators around columns and the open stairs.
- Ghost had been pitched to both Frank Oz and Miloš Forman, and both accepted the job. Oz left because budget concerns did not meet his vision, while Forman was dismissed by Paramount when the studio and screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin disliked his ideas.
