It’s usually not very often that I get taken by surprise, especially when it comes to the movie industry. I’ve been blogging about movies for the better part of a decade now, so I’m rarely surprised when a sequel or remake is announced. When the reboot of Ghostbusters came out in 2016, it was met with very mixed reviews, most bordering on negative. I, myself, didn’t hate the film, I just didn’t think it was the film it could’ve been. It was too self-aware and Paul Feig wasn’t the right person to helm the film. Due to that and the extreme negativity from fans, as well as the poor handling of the film’s PR by both the director and some the actresses, the film was a box-office flop. Because of that, the franchise was supposedly shelved until they came up with something that the fans would really like. Color me shocked and surprised, because I didn’t see this one coming: We are getting an official Ghostbusters 3. You read that correctly, and I assume you’ve seen the teaser trailer I put up here. I, like most people, didn’t hear anything about this movie until today.
From what I’ve gathered by looking at other websites like Dread Central, Ivan Reitman’s son, Jason was secretly co-writing the film with Gil Kenan, the writer for the animated film Monster House. For the better part of 30 years, Ivan Reitman and Dan Aykroyd have been trying to get a third film into production, but time and time again, the project kept collapsing for one reason or another. The biggest hurdle was Bill Murray who played Peter Venkman, who didn’t even want to do the second film. I’m speculating here, but I’m assuming that Ivan and Jason were working with Sony to make deals with what’s left of the original cast to come back. Harold Ramis passed away several years ago, so Egon, most likely won’t show up. Right now, there is no word on what the plot details are, although some past scripts would have had the Ghostbusters team take a trip to Hell itself. We can assume that this film may be the one to be passing the torch to a new generation of ‘busters, and that would make sense. Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, and Bill Murray are getting up there in age. We also don’t know if Sigourney Weaver will return or if Rick Moranis will come out of retirement to play Louis Tully again. There’s also the issue of how the visual effects are going to be presented. One of the big problems with the 2016 reboot was the over-use of CGI, some of which was pretty good, while the rest of it was pretty awful. I would honestly hope that the visual effects artists will use practical effects in addition to some CGI to augment each other. That would be the ideal solution. From what we do know so far, is that Ghostbusters 3 is an actual sequel to the first two, so it will ignore the 2016 film entirely. That’s probably for the best. The film is slated for a summer release in 2020. The fact that we got a teaser NOW, before principal photography begins, shows some serious confidence that the film-makers have for this new entry. I’m going to remain cautiously optimistic, because this has the potential to turn into another Ghostbusters 2016. I don’t think it will considering the talent involved, but Sony has had a bad habit recently of screwing up when it comes to tent-pole movies. This could be a major comeback for Ghostbusters, and I really want it to be. Some people have said that Sony should leave well enough alone, as a new entry won’t come close to capturing the magic of the original film. I can’t say I disagree with that, but you never know what a fresh group of talent will be able to pull. So, yeah, when I saw this teaser and the news for an official Ghostbusters 3:
