Despite the untimely death of original Ghostbuster Harold Ramis, talk of the long-gestating Ghostbusters 3 remains very much alive. Scripts have been debated and overhauled, plots discarded, and original characters largely written out, but there are still plans to bring the Ghostbusters back to the big screen. With Ivan Reitman exiting the project as director, Sony has begun talks with Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the pair behind The LEGO Movie, to helm the return of everyone’s favorite paranormal exterminators.
Ghostbusters 3 has been fraught with production difficulties ever since the idea was floated many years ago. According to Ivan Reitman (via The Film Stage), the script has gone through a number of different iterations. The first script by Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky seems to have featured the original team more, until it became clear the Bill Murray was uninterested in doing another Ghostbusters. Reitman and Etan Cohen then gave it an overhaul, resulting in the current script.
“Harold got sick about three years ago, and we kept hoping he would get better,” says Reitman. “I kept pushing forward on the Etan Cohen and we now have a draft that is very good, that the studio is very excited about … It’s a version of Ghostbusters that has the originals in a very minor role.”
It seems that Lord and Miller will be working with the Etan Cohen script, hopefully retaining something of the original’s spirit. The greatest fear with Ghostbusters 3 is that it will just be a nostalgia-fest, referencing the original without actually doing something different with the old format. But Lord and Miller are well-equipped to make something new while still maintaining a respectful and nostalgic spirit; these are the guys behind the surprisingly enjoyable reboot of 21 Jump Street, after all.
How Ghostbusters 3 will all play out has yet to be seen, but for the first time I am actually a little excited about the prospects for a third film. Harold Ramis won’t be around to see it all come to fruition, but we can hope that Ghostbusters 3 will do right by his memory.