This page contains selected pieces of Ghostbusters 3 news. It does NOT contain every single bit of Ghostbusters 3 “news” that’s ever been published because most of the “news” isn’t news at all. Most of it is rumors or mistruths, or one item that completely contradicts another. I’ve decided to only archive pieces of news that I feel are worth archiving. The stuff that, when you look back on it, shows the progress, or non-progress as the case may be, of the project. Anything pre-1990 will be covered on the 1990 tab, since there’s very little to warrant its own tab.
You might also be interested in reading excerpts from the 1st Draft (March 10, 1999) of Dan Aykroyd’s “Ghostbusters 3: Hellbent” script, which can be found in the March 10, 1999 section below.
GHOSTBUSTERS 3: GHOSTBUSTERS GO TO HELL
My editor is begging me to ask you three questions about “Ghostbusters 3.”
The non-existent film?
Yes. He would like to know about the non-existent film. My understanding is that it would have sent Peter, Ray and Egon to Hell.
Yes. “Ghostbusters go to Hell” was Danny Aykroyd’s concept for it.
What was your favorite scene from that script that we’ll likely never see?
Well, we never really got down to an actual scenario. We had a story. Part of the fun of “Ghostbusters” was developing some kind of lamebrained scientific explanation for what was going on, and I take credit for this:
What Danny had originally conceived was sending us to a special-effects Hell — a netherworld full of phenomenal visual environments and boiling pits and all that stuff.
He does tend to think big when he’s writing these, doesn’t he?
Oh, he’s amazing. [laughs] But my thought was that what works so well about the first two is the mundane-ness of it all. So my notion was that Hell exists simultaneously, and in the same place as our consensus reality. But it’s like a film shutter — it’s the darkness between the 24 frames. When we’re blinking on, they’re off — so we blink alternately with this other reality, which is Hell.
So all the Ghostbusters would need to do [to go to Hell] is take themselves “out of phase” one beat. And we create a device to do it, and it’s in a warehouse in Brooklyn. And when we step out of the chamber, it looks just like New York — but it’s Hell. Everything’s gridlocked — no cars are moving, no vehicles are moving, and all the drivers are swearing at each other in different foreign languages. No two people speak the same language. It’s all the worst things about modern urban life, just magnified.
And Heaven was across the George Washington Bridge in New Jersey — which was irony. The Ghostbusters had to make this journey from lower Manhattan to the George Washington Bridge.
It sort of makes me sad that I’m not gonna see that.
Yeah. There was a good structure — because some of us were in Hell, while some of us were in the real world, tracking our journey through Hell. We had new Ghostbusters and old Ghostbusters.
I’ve read that you had a next-gen cast in mind. If you were casting those roles today, who would play the younger Ghostbusters?
Well, we had Chris Farley as one of them, Ben Stiller as one of them. It was a while ago.
Ivan Reitman, who directed Ghostbusters, told a Los Angeles audience that the time finally feels right to seriously develop the long-awaited, often-rumored Ghostbusters 3. Reitman introduced an anniversary screening of the original film in support of the upcoming Blu-ray release.
“We’re going to get a screenplay in a short time,” Reitman said Wednesday night. “We’re going to see how it is. There’s something in the zeitgeist of the world right now that it feels appropriate. There are some very talented people writing the screenplay. All of our fingers are crossed.”
Before his introductory remarks, Reitman spoke to a group of reporters about the Blu-ray, the Ghostbusters video game and the new sequel. The following Q&A features edited excerpts of that interview. Ghostbusters arrives on Blu-ray June 16.
What finally made a Ghostbusters 3 a real possibility?
Reitman: I actually think the combination of both the Blu-ray release and the new game sort of awakened the thirst of at least the creators of the movie to start to rethink it more seriously, the possibility of a sequel. It’s something that’s been sort of dormant in our minds, really, for the last 10 years or so, and there have been two things that sort of told us, “Wow, people still seem to be really interested in this story, and the characters in this story.” More importantly, it sort of reawakened the joy of working on this film in both iterations.
Did the new sequels to Indiana Jones, Rocky, Rambo and Die Hard more legitimize the idea of revisiting Ghostbusters?
Reitman: No, for me, that actually makes me much more wary, frankly, but it’s never been about the other movies. There have been a ton of sequels almost to all these sort of historical big movies over the years. We’ve never really done it. Now it’s been 25 years since the first one. It’s not like we’d be taking advantage of the power of the movie.
Would the new story be about passing the torch to a younger generation of comedians?
Reitman: Yeah, I think that 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.
And Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg now have a voice with the new script?
Reitman: Except for an outline, I have yet to read anything, so I think they’re going to hand something in in the next month or two.
What are your hopes and fears for a new Ghostbusters?
Reitman: The most important thing [is] we don’t want it to be certainly a disappointment to the people who have sort of taken this very much to their hearts. I feel the responsibility as the producer and director of the original in a very legitimate and real way. It was hard enough to do that sequel, but I think the time is kind of right. I just sort of felt it lately and said that to Columbia, so we’ve started this journey. The most important thing is that the script is good. I think we can find actors who can join the original group of actors to make something special of it.
Ivan Reitman introduced a screening of the Blu Ray release of Ghostbusters. A first look at the HD transfer showed a perfectly clean and clear print of the film that will certainly be worth analyzing in detail on your home HDTV. We caught up with Reitman on classic Ghostbusters memories, the new video game and of course the new possibilities of a Ghostbusters 3.
Crave Online: How real is the possibility of a Ghostbusters 3 now?
Ivan Reitman: Ghostbusters 3 is never definite. We’re not being coy when we say this. We have sort of this very complicated arrangement. A lot of people have a say in what’s going to happen.
Crave Online: Would you still direct it?
Ivan Reitman: Certainly as producer and director of the original movie, I’m going to have that opportunity. The only way I could direct it is if I felt that I could find something wonderfully new to do and to live up to the tradition of the first one. So don’t write that I’m going to direct the next one. I’m not sure and I’m not even sure that there is going to be a next one but I think there’s certainly a great interest in doing it.
Crave Online: What’s changed to even make this a real possibility?
Ivan Reitman: You know, I took a lot of crap when we finally did the sequel. I certainly don’t think the sequel is as good as the original and it almost never is except in really rare occasions, but I remember making the sequel and thinking, “Wow, this is really hard because we don’t have the surprise in our pockets that we had.” When we were making the original, I kept thinking, “Wow, this is going to be great. People have no idea what we’re doing and we’re going to come out and it’s going to be a magical experience.” It turned out to be that. With the sequel, I kept thinking, “Oh my God, we’re going to get killed. There’s no way to recapture the magic of the first one.” We had sort of let a little bit too much time go by from the first to the second, so on the cycle of people’s interests, we were in the wrong part of the cycle. I’d like to think now we’re back to a greater interest to it.
Crave Online: Are you a Blu Ray fan?
Ivan Reitman: Yeah, I’m an early adopter. I have a collection of over 4000 laserdiscs and then all of a sudden this thing called DVDs came out so I’m used to this.
Crave Online: What makes Ghostbusters such a favorite still 25 years later?
Ivan Reitman: I think there’s something about the combination of the actors are very, very special. They’re unique talents with an extraordinary voice individually that seem to combine beautifully as a piece of music. I think that in combination with Dan Aykroyd’s unique, crazy vision of this idea and the sort of mixture of genres of real good comedy with really kind of a legitimate, scary, science fiction story. It was the first time anyone sort of tried to do that. Mel Brooks had done it in a humorous way a little bit before me but I really took it seriously. I was always kind of a horror, science fiction fan. So I thought if I was going to do it even as a comedy, I wanted to legitimize it so that people who were fans of the genre would really appreciate it as well.
Crave Online: With the game showcasing 3D animation, would you consider a 3D version?
Ivan Reitman: It’s possible. I just saw Up which is a lovely movie and really works and the 3D is done in such a subtle way, it actually works fabulously in it. Yeah, it’s a possibility but don’t start writing that we’re doing it in 3D.
Crave Online: Were there other scripts over the years you’d shot down?
Ivan Reitman: Yes. Not a lot because it’s always been a closed shop. There’d be people who spec scripts that we didn’t even look at because we just didn’t want to get into all the legal issues that you could imagine would come from that.
Crave Online: Ghostbusters II does get short shrift. Where’s that Blu Ray?
Ivan Reitman: I’m sure there will be one by the way. It’s only a matter of time. The problem with Ghostbusters II is that it came out a week before the first Batman came out. That was such a startling new [vision]. It was the hot movie of that year. There’s something about when movies are released that really affect our viewpoint of a particular movie at the time. We waited a little bit too long to do the sequel for the very reasons that we’ve waited so long to talk about a third one, so I think it’s affected things. It affected certainly the viewpoint of that movie. I’m actually very happy with the film. I think there’s some really nice things in it, some very funny things in it. It’s not the first one. It never can be the first one but it’s kind of a very interesting companion movie. I’ve been hearing a lot over the years, particularly lately, how on reviewing the film, it seems to be holding up kind of nicely.
Crave Online: The DVD of II had no extras. Do you have behind the scenes or deleted scenes for a Blu Ray?
Ivan Reitman: A lot of times things disappear but I think we were more careful to archive the material from the second one. I do think Sony is planning a Blu Ray version of that movie as its popularity has certainly held on. It was actually quite a successful movie in itself so I think it probably is going to come and if it does, they’ll certainly look through everything to give us as much background stuff as there is.
Crave Online: What are your favorite Blu Rays?
Ivan Reitman: I thought the Third Man disc was really amazing. I just looked at it the other day. I have about 150 of them. I have a little theater in my home. I have a projection television so Blu Ray really helps projection television when you’re up on a fairly large scale.
Crave Online: How does it feel to arrive at this theater and see guys in Ghostbusters uniforms?
Ivan Reitman: I was really excited, guys. Three of these guys just drove in all the way from Salt Lake City apparently. I’m a little tired, I’m usually asleep by this time so just showing up at a movie theater in the town that I live and seeing a dozen guys with the full regalia really was thrilling. It did remind me of the first day of shooting of the first Ghostbusters and I was on Madison Avenue at 61st. We’d been working on the designs. The pre-production on that movie was very, very short. It was really kind of a magical, very creative process. Bill Murray literally had just arrived in town 24 hours before we started shooting and I’d never seen him in an outfit. I’d seen some stuff in the costumer’s place just to see what it looked like and suddenly, I just turn around, I’m getting ready for the first shot and it’s one of the montage shots from the first movie as they start to get busy and the Ghostbusters song really kicks in for the first time, I look up and here comes the three guys with all their crap on. It’s the first time I had ever seen that image and it’s right in New York, right on a real street, right on a famous street, right with shoppers all turning around like who the hell are these guys and what are they doing and what is that symbol. We shot it and I got this wonderful shiver of recognition of oh, I think we’re doing something special. That’s what I thought and it’s kind of nice 25 years later to just sort of see that and get the same kind of lovely feeling in my spine.
Crave Online: What do you think of the game?
Ivan Reitman: I’m not a big gamer. My kids are pretty good gamers but I think the technology hit my own generation oddly so I didn’t get into it in the same kind of way. It seemed appropriate and I think this group was just persistent enough to get the actors involved, the real actors involved and I think that was very important. It just caught this sort of growing wave of interest in Ghostbusters itself. And it’s fortuitous that it all happened.
Crave Online: Are you excited that games can look like movies?
Ivan Reitman: Yeah. I mean, look, my friend Bob Zemeckis told me that he doesn’t ever want to work with actors but he’s in fact working with actors all the time which this sort of motion capture. He had some goofy name for it but it sort of feels like rotoscope still to me from the old days. I think you’re still relying on the performance, both the vocal performance and even the physicality of a real human being for that. So yes, it allows you to do unique things, but for me the magic is in the skill of the performer. So for me to get to work with Bill Murray, nothing could be more exciting. To try to harness that kind of skill and allow people to see what he can do both with his brain and with his body is the most exciting thing a person can do in a creative process. Yeah, technology is all fine and good however it’s done, whether it’s animated films or the kind of special effects that now are within our ability to use, but what counts is story. Finally, are we involved in the story or not? That trumps everything.
Crave Online: Whether it’s Ghosbusters 3 or something else, do you look for the same inspiration in any project you’d direct?
Ivan Reitman: It’s really tough to find something like Ghostbusters again. The one time I sort of traveled into the area, it was not a very happy experience. I normally just try to tell a good story, nothing to do with genre, nothing to do with trying to imitate myself. I think that’s kind of dangerous. Over the years, I’ve been lucky, I’ve worked with great writers and great actors and been able to tell some pretty good stories.
GQ: Is the third Ghostbusters movie happening? What’s the story with that?
Bill Murray: It’s all a bunch of crock. It’s a crock. There was a story – and I gotta be careful here, I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. When I hurt someone’s feelings, I really want to hurt them. [laughs] 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.
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.
Oh, sure, I remember. The soundtrack. The lunchboxes. The action figures.
Right. And it’s still one of the biggest movies of all time. And ever since that story broke, everywhere I go people are like, “So are you gonna make that movie?” I was down in Austin at South by Southwest, and you go at it hard down there – fun but, man, you need to sleep for days afterwards. Anyhow, I got into it one night with a bunch of younger people who were like, Oh, I love Peter Venkman! I grew up with Peter Venkman! We got to talking, and the more we talked about it, the more I thought, Oh Christ, I should just do this thing.
A generation awaits, for sure. You weren’t even supposed to play that role, right?
Yeah. Originally it was Belushi. Like a lot of my movies. [beat] God, John died, what was it, twenty-five years ago?
It was ’82, right?
Yeah, I think it was ’82. I dunno. That part of life is getting fuzzy.
I read that you wanted to play a ghost in the movie. That’s kind of brilliant.
Well, I hadn’t wanted to do the movie. They kept asking, and I kept saying no. So once upon a time I said, just joking: “If you kill me off in the first reel, then fine, I’ll do it.” And then supposedly they came up with an idea where they kill me off and I was a ghost in the movie. Kinda clever, really.
But has the Zombieland cameo stolen that gag?
[genuinely confused] But that was a zombie. Not a ghost.
[…]
Everyone says Danny [Aykroyd] is the nicest guy on the planet.
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One film Aykroyd desperately wants to make is Ghostbusters 3. He’s been trying to get the gang back together since 1999, when he wrote a first draft of the script. A more recent version, by the writers of the US Office but overseen by Aykroyd, has received a favourable response from the studio, Columbia, and all the original cast bar one: Bill Murray. His cantankerous friend’s refusal to have anything to do with the sequel – which is designed to pass the overalls and backpacks to a new generation of buster – has long been a source of frustration to Aykroyd. Proposed release dates have been and gone, with Murray intermittently popping up to dismiss talk of a new film as “a bunch of crock”, or “a horrible rumour”. Late last year it was even reported that Murray sent a script back to Aykroyd shredded, and with a note reading “No one wants to pay money to see fat, old men chasing ghosts”. Aykroyd vehemently denied this, but he does admit defeat on the Murray situation.
Will the film ever materialise?
“I honestly don’t know. At this point it’s in suspended animation. The studio, the director Ivan Reitman and Harold Ramis feel there must be a way to do it, but Bill Murray will not do the movie. He doesn’t want to be involved. He’s got six kids, houses all over America. He golfs in these tournaments where they pay him to turn up and have a laugh. He’s into this life and living it. I know we’d have a lot of fun [but] I can’t be mad at him. He’s a friend first, a colleague second. We have a deep personal relationship that transcends business and he doesn’t want to know.”
He’s recently begun to consider recasting Murray’s role with another actor. Or perhaps, I suggest, his character could come back as a ghost in CGI so the actor doesn’t need to give up the golfing? It’s obviously something that has crossed Aykroyd’s mind, but he wonders if Murray would give his approval even to that.
“We’re not going to do a movie that exploits the franchise. The script has to be perfect. I’m the cheerleader, but I’m only one voice in the matter. It’s a surety that Bill Murray will not do the movie, however there is still interest from the studio.” Aykroyd looks pained. It only seems fair to return to a subject that brings him nothing but joy: alcohol.
Before starting Crystal Head, Aykroyd was one of Canada’s biggest importers of tequila. And it’s when discussing this stuff that Aykroyd reveals a hint of the wild man who rode shotgun with Belushi. Contrary to popular belief, he says, tequila is “a happy alcohol”. So it doesn’t make you crazy? He smiles wistfully. “That could be happiness for some people.”
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