Ghostbusters 3 will fire up Ecto-1 in 2015 to start production on the new movie but it will be without original director Ivan Reitman and presumably most of the cast as well…
It was tragic news that struck recently when famed actor and director Harold Ramis passed away and with him gone, long time friend and collaborator Ivan Reitman decided he no longer wanted to be involved in the upcoming Ghostbusters movie that was set to begin filming next year.
Reitman told Deadline on Tuesday that he will hand the project off to another director because after losing Ramis, it just didn’t feel right to be involved with the project any longer.
“When I came back from Harold’s funeral, it was really moving and it made me think about a lot of things,” Reitman said. “I just finally met with Amy and Doug Belgrad when I got back. I said I’d been thinking about it for weeks, that I’d rather just produce this Ghostbusters. I told them I thought I could help but let’s find a really good director and make it with him. So that’s what we’ve agreed will happen. I didn’t want all kinds of speculation about what happened with me, that is the real story.”
Reitman also revealed that through two different drafts of a script they were still unable to ever get a commitment from original Ghostbusters star Bill Murray on whether or not he was interested in doing the film. His absence also set the movie back quite a ways, and as of now it doesn’t appear that he will end up starring in the movie, even in a guest role.
“The first was done by Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, and me, Harold and Dan helped them on it,” Reitman said. “It was a really good script, but then it became clear that Bill really didn’t want to do another Ghostbusters and that it was literally impossible to find him to speak to for the year or two we tried to get it going. When Bill finally…well, he never actually said no, but he never said yes, so there was no way to make that film.”
The new script by Etan Cohen with an assist by original Ghostbusters star Dan Aykroyd is a much different version of the movie with only cameo appearances planned for the original cast members. If Murray is out, however, that leaves only Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson to potentially star in the movie.
Either way the studio will move full steam ahead to make the film starting in 2015 with a release date to be determined later.
