The Ghostbusters franchise may have laid dormant for decades before 2016's reboot, but the fanbase never really went away. And now with Jason Reitman's sequel coming up next year those fans have reason to get excited again. A fire has been lit under star and producer Dan Akroyd, as well, who reveals that he has a number of new projects on the way that should keep the ghosts busted for a long time to come.
Akroyd spoke with a Canadian outlet and had a pretty sturdy defense of 2016's female-led film, basically blaming himself for things going the way they did...
“I kind of got mad, but I realized I should have blamed myself as a producer, the costs were out of control, I should have been watching as a producer a little more, but you don’t dispute with your director."
He continued, "You hire a director, you trust a director, you trust their vision. But the job that Kate [McKinnon], and Kristen [Wiig], and Leslie [Jones], and Melissa [McCarthy] did and indeed Paul [Feig] did on that movie was superior, or superb. We would have done another one but, again, the cost overruns prevented the studio from looking at it and doing another ladies’ movie…”
So while there was some hope of seeing more of those characters, it's unlikely that the numbers add up. Instead, we're getting a lower-budgeted film from Jason Reitman that is set in the same universe as the original movies, but introduces a brand new cast of school-aged Ghostbusters. The cast so far includes McKenna Grace, Finn Wolfhard, and Carrie Coon.
Beyond that, Akroyd says he has plans for a '60s-set prequel titled Ghostbusters High that he hopes Reitman will tackle some time in the future...
"Although I’ve written “Ghostbusters High,” where they meet in New Jersey in 1969 and we’re looking to do that as probably a glorified feature or pilot within the next maybe five years…. And it would lead to a television project and I thought of him immediately for that."
"It’s on his desk but that’s years away from the current project. But it’s a neat idea for a prequel. Imagine casting the three characters as teenagers!"
"We have at least one or two other concepts for the “Ghostbusters” and then we’ll look at doing the prequel, which will be a perfect button on all we’ve done up to that point."
So the Ghostbusters franchise is alive, well, and growing. Of course, all of this really depends on how Reitman's movie does, and we won't find that out until July 10th 2020.
