Sony’s all-female Ghostbusters reboot would seem to be the only way forward for the franchise, now that women have completely taken over the traditionally male-dominated profession of ghostbusting, and mulched all extant copies of the original films to make tampons for their periods. But for those who still hold out hope that Ghostbusters can be reclaimed by the men who are still alive and actually interested in doing it, Dan Aykroyd has promising news: Like a specter that still visits him in the night to give him an awesome blowjob, he remains haunted by his original idea for a sequel, and he can’t stop thinking it should still be turned into a movie.
Appearing on both SiriusXM’s The Howard Stern Show and Unmasked With Ron Bennington this week, Aykroyd shared some very similarly worded encouraging statements about Paul Feig’s reboot, twice declaring, “I’ve got three daughters, so I’m all for female empowerment.” He also acknowledged that the Ghostbusters franchise itself was, like a broken-down Ecto-1, in desperate need of “a new engine, new exhaust, new steering”—a statement Aykroyd felt comfortable making, because he also has cars.
But while he supports the idea of completely rebooting Ghostbusters into a “parallel reality,” where Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Melissa McCarthy, and Leslie Jones are the first and only Ghostbusters who have ever existed, and he praised all those actors as “masters” of their craft, and he hailed Paul Feig’s “great, great script”—that, nevertheless, “we will work on and make better”—he’s also hopeful this much-needed overhaul will be just the thing to drag his old, broken-down Ghostbusters idea out of the scrap yard and slap a new coat of paint on it.
“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,” Aykroyd said, fairly certain that the only thing that was preventing that conventional third sequel in the first place was that people simply needed to be reminded of Ghostbusters’ existence.
Of course, some may suggest that there are other, additional factors, such as the fact that one of the Ghostbusters is dead, and another continues to demonstrate zero interest. And in his Howard Stern interview, Aykroyd admitted that Murray has “moved on,” and declared, “I don’t think we will ever work together again,” which—combined with Harold Ramis’ death—would seem to mean that original Ghostbusters idea would be totally useless, on account of it requiring Ghostbusters.
Nevertheless, Aykroyd insists of his sequel concept, of which he now has three drafts, “We’re going to be able to salvage some of it and use it some day.” So for those who have already decried this new Ghostbusters as a pale imitation of the original, take heart: Dan Aykroyd remains dedicated to giving you a truly worthy follow-up that will reunite him with all your favorite Ghostbusters, like Ernie Hudson and Annie Potts.