Murray Halts Ghostbusters 3

Bill Murray has fessed up to being the spanner in the Ghostbusters 3 works, and it seems production could already be underway if he were to get his slime-stopping act in gear. But could it be a good thing? It seems his reluctance to commit might be an important creative check on what could easily be another tragic sequel cash-in that wrecks a classic legacy.

Harold “Egon” Ramis and Dan Ackroyd are on board, as is Ivan Reitman, the director of both the original beauties. But Murray seems reluctant to strap on the pack, telling US radio shockjock Howard Stern that “I’m a problem. There’s a script somewhere, but I haven’t read it yet. I only made one sequel and it was Ghostbusters 2 and it didn’t end up the way it was presented.”

So is the Venk-meister having creative cold feet about a project that would be trying to re-awaken a two-decade old franchise with a cast that’s quite far past it’s prime?

“Ivan wants to make it and I owe him,” he told Stern. “He’s puzzled that I haven’t gotten to this one. I’ll get to it, I feel bad. I got a message and I think people – I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings – it’s not the foremost thing in my mind, so I don’t think about it.”

Hmmm. The latest news says the script has been drafted by Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, the writers of the US version of The Office. So far, so alarming. Why? Because it was Ramis and Ackroyd who put the magic in both the original scripts – if they’re no longer considered up to the task, that’s the whole engine of the film at risk. And maybe it’s just Steve Carrell I don’t like, but the US take on the Office is packing buh.

But that’s not all ectoplasm-fans. The rumour mill has it that the story will be a “new generation” spin with fresh faces joining the team. Jack Black, Seth Rogen, Aston Kutcher and Michael Cera are all rumoured inductees and, with the exception of the excruciatingly lame Kutcher, that’s a high class list – but totally wrong for Ghostbusters’ brand of subtly-played, middle-aged silliness. These are films where the character and script were the stars, not the actors. Rogen would e my shout if any of those. But the biggest worry is the similarity to the Indiana Jones debacle – though I love Shia LaBeouf, the young faces angle in that film just made the old boys look past it, and accentuated how creaky Harrison Ford’s performance was.

So Bill, stick to your guns. If Ghostbusters 3 isn’t gonna work, turn it down. Because if there’s one thing we know, it’s that everything was fine with our system until the power grid was turned off by dickless here.

Is this true?

Yes, it’s true. This man has no dick.

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4 Responses to Murray Halts Ghostbusters 3

  1. lartens says:

    Great post, you’re sooo good at writing big B, and it’s about ghostbusters, win win.
    And i gotta say, i thought the office was a pile of arse, i mean the british version. So i dread to think how bad the US version is. So on the one hand if theye are propper fanatics about ghostbusters then they would know what not to do. But surely the point of a sequal is to have more of the same, i mean die hard pulled it off with old brucey still cutting the action adventure scene well. whereas harold and dan porked right up, and got less active and less funny, well harold went into directiong and dan is on the occasional adam sandler movie. Definately 50 first dates but i thought there was another one, nevermind.
    Point is, well done murray for giving us a chance to cry out NO NO STOP, indie 4 was BAAAAD, superman was BAAAD, alien resurection bad, paranlty the latest predetor was bad, but then so was the 2nd.

  2. Mothpete says:

    Oh no sir… The Office was freaking brilliant cringe humour and the UK series was gold on every level. The US series has been stupid, but altogether watchable and funny, and better than most sitcom fodder nowadays.

  3. Mothpete says:

    I’d love to see Ghostbusters get to film one day, but maybe a new cast is the go. Bill Murray doesn’t give a rat’s arse about doing a third, and he was the magic that made the original one of the greatest and funniest movies ever.

    I just wanna see the proton packs goin’ off, and some big 3D effect ghosts and shit… oh and a heap of merchandising. The Ghostbusters icon needs to keep going… outside of the comics and game.

    New movie. Kgo

    • bedgell says:

      Yeah thats the dilemma – there’s few things I want more than another ghostbusters film. But only if done right – it could turn out fantatically, but i just can’t think of one example where an old franchise has come back with the same quality of the early stuff. And you look at evolution (with David duchovny) – a lot of shared production team including reitman of course, similar humour, but just didn’t quite hit the mark.

      Still, chuck a few proton packs in the mix and it would have been a shit load better. Hehehe

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