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Michael C. Gross (born October 4, 1945; died November 16, 2015) was an artist, designer, and producer who worked on the Ghostbusters franchise from the start. He was associate producer on Ghostbusters (1984), executive producer on Ghostbusters II (1989), and executive producer on the animated series The Real Ghostbusters and Slimer! and the Real Ghostbusters. He is not the same person as the actor of the same name from "Family Ties."
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The art direction and final design of the no-ghost sign were done by Gross with help from Brent Boates. Gross has been clear about how the credit divides. On the Slimer Mode track for the first film he said the logo "was in Danny Aykroyd's original script. I take credit as having art directed and designed the original logo but I did not conceive it." Joe Medjuck, on the film's commentary, recalled that Gross "redesigned a little bit of [the] shape of the ghost," while the basic idea came earlier. In the documentary Cleanin' Up The Town, Richard Edlund credited Boates with designing the logo.
Gross was credited as associate producer on the first film, directed by Ivan Reitman. His behind-the-scenes contributions extended past producing into the design work that helped fix the franchise's visual identity.
Gross also has a small in-film cameo. During the first montage, the corner flap of the Time magazine cover bears his image; the fake covers in that sequence were produced by designer Michael McWillie.1
One scene stuck with him. The moment when Peter Venkman walks into Dana Barrett's apartment, leans over the piano, plinks the keys and says "They hate that," made Gross laugh so hard on set that the take had to be redone. He called it the funniest scene in the movie and said he laughed every time he saw it.2
Gross served as executive producer on the sequel. He was involved in the look of the Scoleri Brothers, the courtroom ghosts. Tim Lawrence took his cue from the Blues Brothers, a tall thin man and a short fat man, and pushed the concepts into broad caricature; Henry Mayo helped refine the designs with input from Gross.3 When Reitman worried the ghosts might be over the top, Gross argued for keeping them wild. As he put it, given how frightening other sequences were, going broad with the Scoleris "would lighten the moment," and they were the first full-scale ghosts seen in the film.4
His son, Dylan Gross, worked as a camera loader on Ghostbusters II, one of his first jobs in the business.
Gross was executive producer across the run of The Real Ghostbusters and its later companion Slimer! and the Real Ghostbusters. He also wrote the Slimer! segment "Monkey See, Monkey Don't". Gross recorded commentary for The Real Ghostbusters DVD box set, where an extended interview with him appears on the bonus disc.
Among the toy line tie-ins, Kenner's Ecto-Bomber was a favorite of his, and he kept the product photography and his original approval paperwork for it.5 A company he owned, Emecege, held the rights to produce adult-size T-shirts and sweatshirts depicting Slimer.6
Outside Ghostbusters, Gross built a long producing partnership with Reitman and Medjuck. His credits include associate producer on the animated feature Heavy Metal (1981), executive producer on Legal Eagles (1986) and Kindergarten Cop (1990), and producer on Beethoven (1992) and Beethoven's 2nd (1993).
Before films, he was an art director at National Lampoon. His January 1973 "We'll Kill This Dog" cover for the magazine is among the best known work of his design career and was referenced as set dressing in later IDW Ghostbusters comics.
Don Shay, Making Ghostbusters (New York Zoetrope, 1985), p. 92. ISBN 0918432685. ↩
Claire Bueno, Cleanin' Up The Town: Remembering Ghostbusters. A Cast and Crew's Memoir of Ghostbusters (Premiere Publishing, 2024), p. 180. ISBN 9781836903437. ↩
Adam Eisenberg, "Ghostbusters Revisited," Cinefex no. 40 (November 1989), p. 14. ↩
Adam Eisenberg, "Ghostbusters Revisited," Cinefex no. 40 (November 1989), pp. 11, 13. ↩
Troy Benjamin and Craig Goldberg, The Real Ghostbusters: A Visual History (Dark Horse Books, 2025), p. 192. ISBN 9781506749273. ↩
Troy Benjamin and Craig Goldberg, The Real Ghostbusters: A Visual History (Dark Horse Books, 2025), p. 208. ISBN 9781506749273. ↩
