So, with the Paul Feig lead female casted Ghostbuster reboot, along with the recently announced male centric follow up with Channing Tatum and possibly Chris Pratt which is supposedly directed by the Russo brothers, as well as the announcement of the production company "Ghost Corps" to over see Ghostbusters as a franchise, which Reitman and Ackroyd are going to be leading, I figured now would be a great time to start a thread on a franchise that is very dear to my heart; Ghostbusters. What do you guys make of all of this? I think it is great that there is an attempt to bring Ghostbusters back to the spotlight of today's pop culture. I mean, don't get me wrong here, I know that nothing could beat the original movie, I just think it's cool to see some life brought back into the franchise.
I've got low expectations for the all-female cast of Ghostbusters, because I don't think any of the women involved are funny save for Kristen Wiig. I've got marginally-higher expectations for the all-male cast of Ghostbusters, because Channing Tatum proved he can be funny in the Jump Street films, and if Chris Pratt's involved, well, that can only be a good thing. (The same thing can be said for the Russo brothers' involvement; The Winter Soldier was amazing, Civil War will be amazing, and their work on Arrested Development was nothing short of hilarious). I've got low expectations for the series overall, because a third Ghostbusters film has been in development hell for almost twenty years. Now, suddenly, there are going to be two – not one, but two – Ghostbusters films in what I would imagine to be a short amount of time, and an entire seemingly-already-planned-out franchise surrounding them? It feels, to me, like everything's going to be rushed, and shoddily-done, and that breaks my heart. (And, based on everything I've ever read about the production of Ghostbusters III and Ghostbusters: The Video Game, Bill Murray's basically done with the Ghostbusters; I think, if it wasn't for him, no one would've even cared about the first two films, and it would've never gotten as popular as it did; but, of course, that's just my opinion. It'd be nice if he had a cameo in the films, or was the "unseen director" of the Ghostbusters company; that'd be pretty damn cool, I think.) Don't get me wrong – I hope this blows up and is super-successful and brings back good memories for me, since I grew up on the first two films. I just think it's been too long for it to matter anymore. Although, to be fair, I said the same thing about the Transformers films, and, say what you will about them, they made the Transformers relevant again and made a shit-ton of money, so, y'know, I'm imagining the same thing will happen here.
I think the Sony folks are either 1) Cash-grabbers who attempt to revive, reboot and stretch every movie to make a cinematic universe that rivals Marvel 2) Desperately in need of a profitable franchise (a la Universal with the Fats & Furious franchise) I'm not confident about both movies, but I'm only interested because Paul Feig is a decent comedy director. Also, contradictory to what Will said, I think both Kristen Wiig and Kate McKinnon are fantastic comedians (McKinnon's SNL sketches are consistently good every episode, no matter how bad the ep becomes). Melissa McCarthy has been hit-or-miss, while Leslie Jones is way too new to make an impression.
Many in the Ghostbusters community look to the Video Game that came out in 2009 as what Ghostbusters 3 would have been. I, for one, loved the story line and really enjoyed how they ended the game with (SPOILER ALERT) Ghostbuster franchises branching out all over the country. I thought that was good thinking.
Well it looks as though Chris Hemsworth (Thor, The Huntsman) will be joining the cast of Ghostbusters as the team's receptionist. Which is weird.