The long awaited third installment of the Ghostbusters franchise still has a major hurdle to overcome and that is Bill Murray’s approval of the script. Sony Pictures, Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd and Ivan Reitman all like the much revised Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky script, though Bill Murray hasn’t even read it.
With some franchises like ‘Bourne’ willing to move forward without their star (for some reason), the studio is aware that the success of a third Ghostbusters is contingent on Bill Murray’s involvement, and are unwilling to greenlight the $150 million film unless he commits. He’s also one of the five rights holders to the franchise so production has to wait for him, though he still seems to be uninterested in reading the latest draft.
Writers Eisenberg and Stupnitsky also wrote ‘Year One’ directed by Harold Ramis and the film’s mixed opinions have filtered down to Murray who seems reluctant to work with their material.
Last week Lee Eisenberg and Ghostbusters 3 producer Joe Medjuck both gave some updates about the stalled production. Eisenberg was in Connecticut to kick off some lectures at his former College and talked about the delay because of Murray:
Right now, we have a script we haven’t worked on probably in a couple of months, and we’re waiting for Bill Murray to read it. People seem excited about it, and the studio seems high on it. … We’re very proud of it. We worked really hard on it, and I think it’d be a really fun movie.
Eisenberg also mentioned that Reitman, Aykroyd and Ramis have helped beef up the script for which Ramis will now receive a story credit on the film:
We’ve been working really closely with Ivan Reitman for a couple years on it. Dan Aykroyd has been really involved. Harold Ramis has been very involved — we’re sharing a story credit on it with him. Then we reworked the script. I mean, that script went through a lot of rewrites, and it kept getting, we think at least, tighter and funnier. It took a little bit to really understand the tone of a movie like Ghostbusters. It’s really scary when you’re writing characters you grew up on. … The last thing you want to do is disappoint.
Ghostbusters 1, 2 & 3 producer Joe Medjuck was at a special Ghostbusters screening at the Arclight Cinema along with members of the special effects team (including William Atherton) and took some questions from the audience.
Medjuck spoke of how Murray just committed to the original Ghostbusters and started reading the script when shooting began:
Sony says they’d like to make it, everyone thinks it’s a good script. Bill has heard it’s a good script, but he hasn’t read it. Bill’s like that – he just says he’s busy.
Harold tells a very funny story about the several months it took to get Bill to read the script for Groundhog Day. Every week or so, [Bill] would go up to Harold and say, “You know, I read 10 pages… they’re really good. Is it going to stay this good?”
He hasn’t even read 10 pages [of Ghostbusters 3] yet, to the best of our knowledge.
[Regarding the original Ghostbusters] Bill just committed to it… he just said yes. He went to India to make The Razor’s Edge. I don’t think he even read the script [for Ghostbusters] until he arrived back, [and] the day he came back, we shot with him.
You can check out the Ghostbusters Q&A from the Arclight Cinema here:
We’ll have to wait and see how things tun out, and if Murray does decide to proceed, Ghostbusters 3 is scheduled to start production later this year.
via: ScreenRant
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