Ghostbusters mastermind Dan Aykroyd has wanted to get a third movie up and running for a long time, and it did seem for a time that one may have come close last year, but now may be stuck in development hell for good.
The movie probably can’t be done without Bill Murray, and apparently he’s the road block to a Ghostbusters 3 getting made. Murray recently griped on the Letterman show that when he was promoting his latest film, Moonrise Kingdom overseas, “That’s about all they [wanted] to know at Cannes, too. They just don’t have a really good script. It’s hard. You know, even the second Ghostbusters wasn’t as much fun for me as the first one. It’s hard to make a sequel. The first one was so darn funny. It’s hard for me.”
At the same time, as reported on The Guardian, Murray said they make take another pass at the script, adding, “I always drag my feet on it, but you know, we’ll try again.”
Aykroyd previously confirmed the film may go forward without Murray, who has never shown much interest in a third Ghostbusters, and it’s usually difficult to get him to commit to any movie. There was even a report that Murray sent his copy of the Ghostbusters 3 script back to Aykroyd after it went through the paper shredder with a note: “No one wants to pay money to see fat, old men chasing ghosts!” (Note: Aykroyd denies this actually happened.)
Aykroyd also told Indie Wire that a third Ghostbusters has to have Rick Moranis back, even though fellow Ghostbuster Harold Ramis told the site, “Rick won’t do it. Rick has retired from show business.”
I still find it amazing that there’s so much fan good will out there for Ghostbusters after all these years, and that the fans would still love to see them one more time. But indeed, as we’ve written here before, the first Ghostbusters was a magic movie where the planets aligned. They couldn’t recapture it with Ghostbusters II, and it would be even more difficult, if not impossible, to recapture it in a third installment.
Again, it’s great that the fans are still behind it, and it’s great that Aykroyd is trying his damndest to bring it back for one more round, but if the third movie sucks it would tarnish our memories even more. It was indeed a perfect vehicle for a franchise, but how could you ever top the original cast, and script, not to mention Slimer and the Stay Puft Stay Puft Marshmallow Man?
