In the ancient times before dudes were working themselves into fits of dumbass hysteria about all-female screenings of Wonder Woman, there was a loud neckbeardy wail against Ghostbusters rolling with a female-focused reboot in 2016. Original star/co-writer Dan Aykroyd smacked down that panic with a hearty endorsement of the film, but apparently he’s had a bit of criticism stored away about how director Paul Feig made the film. From the sounds of things, quite a lot of criticism, actually.
Appearing on the U.K.’s Sunday Brunch, viewers did a bit of a double take when Aykroyd laid out his issues with Feig. The way Aykroyd framed the filmmaker’s work on Ghostbusters was that Feig was a fiscally irresponsible and non-cooperative entity that had unwittingly made an enemy in Sony. Here’s the key portion courtesy of ScreenRant:
“The girls are great in it. Kate McKinnon, Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig – what a wonderful, wonderful players they are – and Leslie Jones. I was really happy with the movie, but it cost too much. And Sony does not like to lose money. 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 – the director, he spent too much on it. He didn’t shoot scenes we suggested to him and several scenes that were going to be needed and he said “nah, we don’t need them”. Then we tested the movie and they needed them and he had to go back. About $30 to $40 million in reshoots. So he will not be back on the Sony lot any time soon.”
To be fair to Paul Feig, there are probably times where you don’t need to listen to the guy who directed Nothing But Trouble for advice on a crowd-pleasing ensemble comedy. Aykroyd’s criticism is more of a budgetary and collaboration issue, so it’s not like he’s throwing the movie under the bus. He’s just kinda putting Feig’s ankles under the wheels over his studio/producer disagreements. Would a tighter budget and going with the scenes suggested have made Ghostbusters a better (and more sequel-friendly) movie? That’s for drunken summer arguments to sort out. The folks who love this version of Ghostbusters (howdy!) might be inclined to say that we’re quite happy with what we got, thank you very much.
(Via ScreenRant)
