Like a cloud of ectoplasm floating above a seance, slowly coalescing into the familiar face of a lost loved one, Ghostbusters 3 keeps getting closer and closer to reality. In an interview with the LA Times’ Hero Complex, Dan Aykroyd says that the film could shoot as early as this winter, but that at least one familiar partner won’t be back.
Ivan Reitman, Aykroyd said, is too busy being a ‘super producer’ to direct the third installment. But the actor hopes that his fellow Ghostbuster, Harold Ramis, can step into the director’s chair. Ramis has more than proven himself as a filmmaker, so anybody who has a problem with that can keep it to themselves.
Aykroyd says that the latest script, by Year One and The Office scribes Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg (do these guys sound like they should be opening up for Henny Youngman in a Borscht Belt club or what?), has a new team of five Ghostbusters, some of whom are women.
“I’d like it to be a passing-of-the-torch movie. Let’s revisit the old
characters briefly and happily and have them there as family but let’s
pass it on to a new generation.”
Aykroyd also explains that while it was technically Bill Murray, who has a one-fifth stake in the property, who held Ghostbusters 3 up, he can’t be mad at the guy.
“Billy, you can’t blame an artist for not wanting to do the same thing again. He did two of them,
for God’s sake. Although I’m the biggest cheerleader as the originator
of the concept but I’ve never begrudged Billy not doing a third movie.
I never said he held it up or that he refused. Hey, listen, he’s an
artist. You can’t force somebody into it. I’m sorry he never read my
third draft because I thought it was pretty good but, look, now we’re
at a point that there’s a story that he can accept and that’s going to
work…”
For the rest of the story, go to the Hero Complex. And by the way, take everything Aykroyd says with a grain of salt. He’s doing his damndest to cheerlead this movie into reality, so it’s always possible he’s overstating things.