Going Badly Beyond Ghostbusters.

Dan Ackroyd says that Ghostbusters 3 – using the original actors playing the original roles – is close to becoming reality. He says he expects shooting to begin early in 2014. The problem is, apparently, that Bill Murray wants no part of it. He is reported as saying ‘Nobody wants to watch fat old guys chasing ghosts.’

I think he’s probably wrong. I think an awful lot of people would watch it out of a sense of curiosity. What I don’t understand is why Ackroyd wants to do it, except to gross a few more million for the studio and the top stars. I don’t believe it could ever be the third part of a true Ghostbusters trilogy; it’s too far removed. The actors are thirty years older now, so the characters would have to be thirty years older. That might make for some interesting script and plot elements, but its connection with the originals would be weak.

Ghostbusters stands tall as a cinematic icon consisting of two films about some fit, thirty something parapsychologists-with-attitude coming to the rescue of New York City in the greed-is-good eighties. It's funny, exciting, imaginative, and even romantic. It's so different from anything else that it remains almost as fresh today as it was then. A third one now would have to be so essentially different in terms of character and environment that it could only amount to a curio tagged on the end. I think it would dilute the magic, and that would be a shame.