Dan Aykroyd talks about Ghostbusters III like he needs it to pay off a gambling debt. Legions of Ghostbusters fans don't want a sequel because it's never going to come close to being as good as the original. The prospect of a reboot with a female-led cast is certainly intriguing, and I don't want to reject it out of hand. My irritation comes from Aykroyd, who believes that filming on Ghostbusters III is always just around the corner. That last link, in case you don't want to click on it, was when Aykroyd thought Ghostbusters III could start filming the following winter. We posted that story in May 2009.
But now Aykroyd isn't just looking ahead to a third Ghostbusters. Oh no. He's thinking of a Marvel-style universe. Grab something you can bang your head against, and hit the jump.
According to THR, Aykroyd was in London promoting his brand of Crystal Head vodka, and said he, producer Ivan Reitman, and the executives, were now looking at the next ten years for a franchise that hasn't even entered serious pre-production on a third installment.
"It’s beyond just another sequel, a prequel, another TV show. I'm thinking what does the whole brand mean to Sony?" he said. "What does Pixar and Star Wars mean to Disney? What does Marvel mean to Fox?"
Why do you care what the brand means to Sony? Is that the attitude he came in with when it came to the original Ghostbusters? When they started filming, did he turned to Ivan Reitman, and say, "Gosh! I really hope this brand means something to the studio!" But to answer his question, Pixar and Star Wars mean money to Disney. Marvel means money to Fox. Ghostbusters means money to Sony.
But wait. It gets so much worse.
He added that the focus must be "not just another movie or another TV show, but what’s the totality of it? The whole mythology from the beginning of their lives, the end of their lives. Ghostbusters at nine years old, Ghostbusters in high school."
To be clear, this franchise began as four dudes who wore nuclear reactors on their back and shot laser beams at the Stay Puft marshmallow man. We didn't need to see a TV episode about how much Stantz loved Stay Puft marshmallows. Part of what's appealing about Ghostbusters is that they don't have mythology. They're regular guys. If anything, they fight mythology because mythology breeds big, nasty creatures bent on world domination.
Except that original concept is old, stupid, and boring now:
"It’s up on blocks, it needs new electronics, new everything," he said. "That’s what we have to do. The whole vehicle of Ghostbusters has to be rebuilt. That’s the ambitious thinking that’s going on now. Taking on the model of Marvel where we take all of the elements that are in this movie and we put them out there as different ideas."
He really has no idea what the hell he's talking about. It's a little sad, and he sounds more like a studio executive as opposed to someone who ostensibly should be functioning as a creative voice.
And then comes the perfect capper to this story:
Aykroyd also added that he thought the idea of a female-led Ghostbusters was a possibility for the third or fourth film. "We need to write it," he said though.
That's right. Still hasn't written the third movie, but already has plans to provide a deep mythology for unknown characters that will span across future films, TV shows, and "the totality of it".
We'll be back with you in 2019, when none of this has happened, but Dan Aykroyd continues to think it will.