You have to give Dan Aykroyd credit: no one has had more faith in the continuation of the Ghostbusters franchise than him. He’s talked about it, off and on, for years, even when we all laughed, even when we told him he was crazy and even when we begged him to stop. Now that the reboot has been announced, with a cast, a script, and a director in place, one might expect that Aykroyd would be satisfied and we would hear no more about his Ghostbusters III script. Well, how wrong we were.
Apparently, Aykroyd still has hopes that his ideas from previous drafts will get incorporated into this new franchise. He had an awful lot to say on on Unmasked with Ron Bennington on Sirius XM (via /Film), and here are some of the more pertinent quotes:
Oh I’ve written… well, we have…I’ve written, well, there’s three drafts of the old concept that exists. And we’re going to be able to salvage some of it and use it. Yeah, we’re gonna be able to use it some day. Let’s get this one made and that will reinvigorate the franchise and then we’ll go on to maybe doing a more conventional third sequel as we were planning and another idea I have for it.
That sounds like Aykroyd is not quite expecting his previous scripts to be produced, but at least for them to form the basis of the reboot’s sequels – if, indeed, the first film is successful:
I can tell you, as the originator, I’m very happy with what [Feig’s] done. It’s very tasteful. And it needed a reworking. The thing needed a new engine. You know? It needed new exhaust. It needed new steering. And this is what we’re getting…The real reality in fact of the third movie with this tremendous cast of women, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones and Kristen Wiig. . . I’ve got three daughters, so I’m all for female empowerment….[Feig] establishes the voices beautifully in these characters. Now of course, he’s got masters playing the roles for him, so this is going to really work in our favor for the third movie.
Aykroyd also says he will contributing to Paul Feig’s script for the new film, which could be good news. At the very least, it means that he’s involved in the new direction of the franchise without actually controlling it. Win/win, if you ask me.
As crazy as Aykroyd sometimes sounds, it’s nice to hear such support for the new franchise coming from one of the originators of the old. I certainly join Aykroyd in hoping that the new Ghostbusters is a success and is able to launch one or two more sequels with the same cast. If it works, there’s no reason why we can’t come back for more.
We shall have to wait awhile before we get to see what the Ghostbusters reboot has in store. The film is set to come out July 22, 2016.