Veteran Hollywood director Ivan Reitman helmed the original Ghostbusters, and as we all know by now, Dan Aykroyd’s really been chomping at the bit for another round.
But could it actually happen one day, or is this all a bunch of wishful thinking? Interestingly, Reitman’s been doing some press lately for the Blu-ray release of Dave, the great comedy starring Kevin Kline where he takes the place of the President. It was written by Gary Ross, who helmed the first Hunger Games flick, and even though Reitman, who directed Dave, is primarily known as a comedy guy, he once said many of his films are really sci-fi. Dave fits that mold in the sense of a duplicate taking over the country.
Even though Ghostbusters is of course a comedy, it’s also got plenty of sci-fi and horrific elements, which Aykroyd and Reitman blended together brilliantly. Well, Collider recently interviewed Reitman about the Dave Blu-ray and the prospect of another Ghostbusters of course had to be asked about.
Surprisingly, Reitman said Ghostbusters “probably should be remade, if we can get it all right. We’re working on it, so we’ll see.” (Funny enough, Reitman’s also trying to get a sequel to Twins off the ground, Triplets).
At the same time, Reitman said of the whole reboot trend in movies, “I was having this conversation with the head of a studio, they were concerned that we’re killing the business by remaking the same thing. A third of the films being made are animated films for children or a mostly family audience, a third of the movies are comic book movies – and that leaves 200 other movies, sharing this very narrow financial amount. That’s made them very nervous about doing anything original, and doing anything that isn’t down-the-center and commercial.”
With something like Ghostbusters, you also have the intense scrutiny of the geeks. For a third ‘Busters, Aykroyd wants to bring in new people he can hand the torch to, and Danny would be in it as an elder Ghostbuster. One of a number of stumbling blocks a new ‘Busters has faced is Bill Murray refuses to be a part of it, allegedly telling Aykroyd nobody wanted to see old, fat guys chasing ghosts. Rick Moranis is also retired, and it would be tough to pull him back into action for another go round.
As we’ve reported here on TG a number of times, Aykroyd had remained very hopeful there will be another Ghostbusters, and it’s clear there’s a lot of fans out there who still love the original. But perhaps too much time has gone by, and the original could be too sacred to remake.
Still, you have to admit that after all this time it’s amazing we’re still talking about Ghostbusters. It’s also amazing there’s still interest in doing a sequel to a movie that’s nearly thirty years old. You really have to admire anything with that kind of staying power, genre or otherwise.
