It’s interesting how people view the same things so differently. Sci-fi Wire has this interview with “Ghosbusters” director and producer Ivan Reitman and they choose to step-out with the lede: why Reitman thinks the time is perfect now for “Ghosbusters 3” (and others have followed suit and regurgitated the same).
But immediately more interesting to us is this quote from Reitman about the fact that any of the “Ghosbusters” crew, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, himself and Columbia have veto power to kill a third film if they don’t like the story written by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg (Ramis’ “Year One,” “The Office”)
“Yeah, I think [the younger generation] is part of the story that we’re working on right now. We’ll see how it turns out. One of the reasons there’s not Ghostbusters 18 right now is that we’re basically this family that all have an equal voice in something. The studio is one of five equal voices. The studio would have liked to have made a bunch of them, and we’ve been really quite selective. Frankly, any of us can kill it.
Obviously Columbia and Akyroyd are not going to kill it. The studio would love threequel dollars, “The Office” scribes are Ramis protégés, and if it were up to the too-invested Aykroyd, they would be on “Ghostbusters 18″ by now. The actor created the idea and as Reitman says, “When we used to talk about the three Ghostbusters we would say that Danny was the heart, Harold was the brain and Murray, of course, was the mouth. And in real life I would characterize it the same way.”
According to a recent New York Times profile, Aykroyd wrote three different drafts of a “Ghosbusters 3” and every version was rejected by Reitman, Ramis and the always-slippery Murray. Everyone has to love it and nothing is set in stone. As Reitman says, “There are some very talented people writing the screenplay. All of our fingers are crossed.”
Now is anyone of the five possible principals going to kill this thing? Most likely not. Everyone’s older, less invested and it’s a passing of the torch to a new generation so it’s not like the original cast will probably be that heavily involved. In a way, aside from Aykroyd, they’re all probably way less invested. At least, surely generally crotchety Bill Murray is. Surely Stupnitsky and Eisenberg would have to deliver a total turd for this thing to get rejected.
“The most important thing is that the script is good,” says Reitman. “I think we can find actors who can join the original group of actors to make something special of it.” Btw, “Ghostbusters” fans will want to check out these never-before-seen behind the scenes shots over at Io9.
