Ghostbusters 3 New Writer Confirmed

Posted by on July 10th, 2012   Filed under: Comedy, Horror
Source: Variety

Ghostbusters 3 just will not die, much to Bill Murray’s chagrin. In case you haven’t been following the development of this long-requested sequel, it was officially announced back in 2008 after Sony hired Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky (Year One) to pen the script. Ivan Reitman was back on board to direct and it seemed like everything was falling into place… until it came to light that Bill Murray was not happy with the script and not interested in doing the sequel, no matter what. For the next couple of years the project was seemingly in a holding pattern, with Dan Aykroyd continuing to promise big things and Bill Murray continuing to shoot them down. Now this week it’s been confirmed that Sony has hired a new writer to try and smooth things over and hopefully come up with a script that everyone is happy with. But will there still be a role for Bill Murray in it?

According to Variety, the new writer is Etan Cohen, best known for his work on Tropic Thunder and Idiocracy. He also wrote the original script for Men in Black 3, although ironically his work on that movie was touched up by a couple of other scribes including David Koepp. He’s done some decent stuff, but something tells me he’s facing an impossible task here.

Dan Aykroyd had already revealed last week that a rewrite was underway when he made an appearance in Amherst, NY, promoting his Crystal Head Vodka. He said, “It’s got to be perfect. That’s the whole thing. There’s no point in doing it unless it’s perfect.” But the last time Aykroyd talked about the project he had already pretty much confirmed that Murray would not do it and hinted that they might even recast his role. If that is the case, why would they bother doing another rewrite?

Obviously everything hinges on getting Bill Murray to return — without him, most fans would probably look at a third Ghostbusters film as a flimsy cash grab. Interestingly, Murray was recently asked about the project while promoting Moonrise Kingdom and he actually said it was “a possibility”, which is a much more optimistic response than he’s given in a long time. Could he be changing his mind about Ghostbusters 3? Was the rewrite initiated at his request? It’s hard to say. One thing’s for sure: fans are getting tired of being given the runaround. What do you think, is this good news? Will Ghostbusters 3 ever actually get made?



  • BarBar

    A further attempt to bamboozle Bill with Cohen/Coen confusion a la Garfield?

  • Jason

    I hate to say it, but as a life-long (and virtually obsessed) fan of the Ghostbusters franchise (well, since I was 6), I have very little hope this will ever take off and be successful with the direction it’s been heading in so far. Perhaps Sony should consider Ethan Coen instead of this Etan Cohen. A new and stylized vision of the franchise may be needed to make it work, but with the charm of the first movie. I dunno… It needs GOOD and competent fresh blood injected into it. As much as I enjoy his older films, I think Ivan Reitman needs to hand over directing duties to a new director….someone with a good track record thus far. I agree with Bill and Dan…it DOES need to be PERFECT. If it makes it to the box office and bombs, I will be one sad little spud. These Sony people need to LISTEN to the fans. A lot of us out here have great ideas and know the material ALMOST better than Dan himself! LOL I’ve had many conversations with people about how, “It would be awesome if they did ‘this’ or ‘that’.” Eh… we’ll see.

  • Captain N

    I’d love to see a Ghostbusters 3 but let’s not lie to ourselves, all these writers and rewrites are not promising. They need to just ditch the current draft and hire a brand new writer who has absolutely no connection to the project over the past few years. Somebody with a passion for Ghostbusters and can breathe some new life into the franchise. This all sounds like a beating of a dead horse and that’s how it’s been the past several years. I don’t care if Murray returns or not, the main focus should be creating new Ghostbusters who are just as compelling as the previous.

  • La Menthe

    Why the fuck do they keep giving the job for a sequel of a classic to these bad writers? Year One and Men in Black 3? Come on! I hope Murray rejects it this time too. The studio is basically asking for rejection when it hires fucktard-writers.

  • Brendan

    @BarBar, I was thinking that same thing!

    I was still pulling for this, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea. If this gets made, it’ll come out around thirty years after the original was released! Thirty years! Even Star Wars didn’t take that long from the original to Episode I, and they didn’t even use the original cast.

  • La Menthe

    Star Wars was a prequel. This is a sequel. And Star Wars used the same actors wherever it was possible (like C3P0 and Palpatine).

    And I don’t think I speak only for myself when I say the film REQUIRES Aykroyd and Murray for it to be acceptable.

    That being said, it doesn’t help much when they keep hiring in fucking retard writers.

  • Brendan

    @La Menthe, I used Star Wars as an example because it’s a movie that had a large amount of time between installments. Call it a prequel if you like (the word was created because of Star Wars), it’s still an appropriate comparison.

    And I also realize Star Wars used a few of the same actors, but only ones that had their appearance covered by makeup and costumes or puppets. None of the core cast returned, which is the point I was making. Ghostbusters relies on having it’s lead actors back for a sequel more than Star Wars did. Can you imagine if the made a new Star Wars today with Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher trying to play the same characters from 30 years ago? It would be fundamentally different, and that’s the point I was making.