Female Ghostbusters Getting A Sequel?
The female Ghostbusters might be coming back.
This article is more than 2 years old
It’s been a minute since Sony released their all-female version of Ghostbusters. The movie starred Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy alongside Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones of Saturday Night Live fame. But upon its release, the film received immense backlash from fans which devolved into sexist comments and online trolling of the cast. Despite the negativity, it seems like Sony still wants to revisit a female Ghostbusters in the future.
The news comes by way of digital creator Daniel Richtman who shared the news on his Patreon account. While this isn’t an official source, this isn’t the first time rumors of a female Ghostbusters sequel have surfaced. In 2019 the film’s director, Paul Feig told the Guardian that he would like to make a sequel “if anybody ever wanted it” because as a fan of the original story working on the movie was like being “a kid in a candy store”.
Regarding the backlash to the female Ghostbusters, the director believes there will always be some pushback whenever someone tries to change something or break rules. At the time, Feig was looking forward to Jason Reitman’s take on the franchise with Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
Reitman is the son of filmmaker Ivan Reitman, who directed the original 1984 Ghostbusters and its 1989 sequel. Written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, the film starred Bill Murray, Aykroyd, and Ramis as Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, and Egon Spengler, a trio of eccentric parapsychologists who start a ghost-catching business in New York City. It also featured Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis alongside Annie Potts, William Atherton, and Ernie Hudson in supporting roles.
Ghostbusters went on to become a cult classic that still appeals to generations of fans. After the phenomenal success of the first movie and the sequel (Ghostbusters II), the franchise went on to create two animated television series (The Real Ghostbusters and Extreme Ghostbusters), video games, and the maligned female reboot.
Given the success of the franchise, it was a little surprising that the female version of Ghostbusters failed. But sometimes movies fail due to circumstance rather than quality, which was probably the case with the 2016 reboot. Although it featured a fantastic cast of women, the project seemed doomed from the start. The fandom of the original films felt that the all-female cast was a “gimmick” and seemingly went out to sabotage the project even before it was released. Online trolling even caused its trailer to become the most disliked movie trailer in YouTube’s history.
The box office takings were not kind to the female Ghostbusters either, with The Hollywood Reporter estimating that the film’s financial losses would be over $70 million. While the storytelling did feel somewhat lackluster, it probably would have done better if the folks who couldn’t fathom the idea of women fighting ghosts had been a little less vocal about it online. While we wait to see if Sony does follow through on an all-female Ghostbusters sequel in the future, fans can look forward to Ghostbusters: Afterlife which is scheduled for release on November 11, 2021
