The death of Harold Ramis, the departure of Ivan Reitman as director, and the continued dismissive sighs of Bill Murray would seem to suggest—to all but the most wild-eyed and possessed—that this is a sign for Ghostbusters 3, all right: “Going Out Of Business. ”And yet, Sony remains convinced the sequel will come, in one of the pre-chosen reboot forms. So it continues to search for other directors who are comfortable with repackaging nostalgia properties for a jaded audience—hence its recent pursuit of Phil Lord and Chris Miller, whose work on 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie turned similarly cheap ideas into surprise successes. But there has to be a limit, and The Wrap’s Jeff Sneider says Ghostbusters 3 may have been it.
With Lord and Miller wisely balking, Sony will move on to the rest of its previously mentioned short list of directors, hoping to find someone who’s eager not only to tackle one of the most fiercely guarded franchises in film history, but also to follow in the wake of two of the only modern filmmakers for whom the reboot’s many critics might have allowed the slightest benefit of the doubt.
“Hey, ‘Who you gonna call?’ Right?” a Sony executive ribs his colleague, before a grim silence envelops the room. For, indeed, who.