While there have been conflicting details and sporadic denials of its very existence by some of the people involved (I’m looking at you Bill Murray), Dan Aykroyd insists that Ghostbusters III will happen and recently revealed that he’s taking over the writing duties on the third Ghostbusters installment.
In an interview with GQ Magaxine, Murray said that the original Ghostbusters III script was written by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg (The Office), and he wasn’t very happy with them.
“I gotta be careful here, I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings. When I hurt someone’s feelings, I really want to hurt them. [laughs] Harold Ramis said, ‘Oh, I’ve got these guys, they write on The Office, and they’re really funny. They’re going to write the next Ghostbusters’. And they had just written this movie that he had directed. Year One. Well, I never went to see Year One, but people who did, including other Ghostbusters, said it was one of the worst things they had ever seen in their lives. So that dream just vaporized. That was gone. But it’s the studio that really wants this thing. It’s a franchise. It’s a franchise, and they made a whole lot of money on Ghostbusters.”
This gave people the impression that Ghostbusters III was not going to happen but, Aykroyd told Vanity Fair:
“He was talking about the writers from Year One, and I think he was reacting to the box-office success and the general public view of the film, which in my view was a very serviceable comedy, and in the end I think they’ll make their money back. I think he was concerned that the writing on Ghostbusters 3 by these guys would not be up to standard, but I can tell you firsthand, I’m working on the script now and those two – Stupnitsky and Eisenberg, [writer-producers of The Office] – wrote Bill the comic role of a lifetime, and the new Ghostbusters and the old are all well represented in it…we have a strong first draft that Harold Ramis and I will take back, and I’m very excited about working on it.”
Aykroyd also spoke about how the old and new generations of Ghostbusters would fit into the story:
“Now [in Ghostbusters 3] my character’s eyesight is shot, I got a bad knee, a bad hip-I can’t drive that caddy anymore or lift that Psychotron Accelerator anymore, it’s too heavy. We need young legs, new minds-new Ghostbusters; so I’m in essence passing the torch to the new regime, and you know what? That’s totally okay with me.”
Ghostbusters III is (supposedly) slated to hit theaters in 2012.
