Dan Aykroyd Is Still Trying To Make ‘Ghostbusters 3’ Happen (With Bill Murray As A Ghost)

Columbia Pictures

Following the tepid response to Paul Feig’s reboot (you might even say the public did NOT answer the call), it seemed like the Ghostbusters movie franchise was done for good. Not so fast, yells Dan Aykroyd with a bottle of Crystal Head Vodka in one hand and the script for Ghostbusters 3 in the other.

There’s been talk of a third Ghostbusters movie with Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson ever since… well, Ghostbusters 2 came out nearly thirty years ago. A story, centered around Dana Barrett and Peter Venkman’s child Oscar, had even supposedly been written and the “studio green-lit it,” according to director Ivan Reitman, but “in the midst of that, Harold got really sick. And that was pretty much it.” (Ramis passed away in 2014.)

Aykroyd hasn’t given up hope, though. “There is a possibility of a reunion with the three remaining Ghostbusters. It’s being written right now,” he said on The Big Interview with Dan Rather. “I think Billy will come. The story’s so good. Even if he plays a ghost.” Billy is, of course, Bill Murray, who requested to play a ghost in Ghostbusters 3. A script was written with that premise, and “it was kind of funny, but not well executed,” the Isle of Dogs star admits. Murray also said that one of Aykroyd’s ideas was “crazy bizarre and too crazy to comprehend,” which gives me an excuse to share the original idea for 1984’s Ghostbusters.

Danny’s original treatment [for the original Ghostbusters], which he wrote for John Belushi and himself, took place in outer space and the future, with competing groups of ghostbusters and all kinds of stuff going on that was almost impossible to shoot on any budget, particularly then without CGI. (Via)

Also, it was called Ghost Smashers.

As for Aykroyd, he’s only appeared in two movies since 2015: Pixels and Feig’s Ghostbusters, which he said he “was really happy with the movie, but it cost too much… It made a lot of money around the world but just cost too much, making it economically not feasible to do another one. So that’s too bad.” He’s not wrong: it was unnecessarily expensive, and it likely torpedoed any chance of a third film. Hm, maybe the low box office gross wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

(Via Bloody Disgusting)

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