There’s an unbelievably entertaining Bill Murray interview at GQ (where among other things he claims he made Garfield because he thought that screenwriter Joel Cohen was Joel Coen), and in it he reveals what may have finally killed Ghostbusters 3: the nigh upon unwatchable Year One.
Harold Ramis said, Oh, I’ve got these guys, they write on The Office, and they’re really funny. They’re going to write the next Ghostbusters. And they had just written this movie that he had directed… Year One. Well, I never went to see Year One, but people who did, including other Ghostbusters, said it was one of the worst things they had ever seen in their lives. So that dream just vaporized. That was gone. But it’s the studio that really wants this thing. It’s a franchise. It’s a franchise, and they made a whole lot of money on Ghostbusters.
Murray doesn’t quite close the door on Ghostbusters 3 forever – he remarks that while hanging out at SXSW the young crowd’s enthusiasm for Peter Venkman made him think he should revisit the role – but it does seem that the current iteration, with a script by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, has been averted.