After defying all expectations and making a worthwhile 21 Jump Street reboot and then turning around to do the impossible by crafting a feature film based on a brand that was far beyond simply a product advertisement, the duo of Phil Lord and Chris Miller are going for a hat trick. Following years of baseless rumors and whispers from the original cast, we got word this week that Ivan Reitman would be stepping down from the Ghostbusters 3 director’s chair and that Sony would be replacing him with a new director in time for an early 2015 kick off; we now have the first word on who it (or rather, they) might be.
According to Nikki Finke, who, despite her demeanor, is usually on point, has unveiled that The LEGO Movie duo is currently in talks to direct the sequel, giving way to the only reason we’d actually be interested in this project. As for what we might expect from the project, Reitman opened up a bit about the different iterations for the project, saying, “The first was done by Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, and me, Harold [Ramis] and Dan [Aykroyd] helped them on it. It was a really good script, but then it became clear that Bill [Murray] really didn’t want to do another Ghostbusters and that it was literally impossible to find him to speak to for the year or two we tried to get it going.”
When Murray declined to take part, he said, “We decided to start over again, and I started working with Etan Cohen, with Dan lending a helping hand. Harold got sick about three years ago, and we kept hoping he would get better. I kept pushing forward on the Etan Cohen and we now have a draft that is very good, that the studio is very excited about.” He added, “It’s a version of Ghostbusters that has the originals in a very minor role” and that he’s hoping to retain the “spirit of the original film.” So, if the talks for Lord and Miller go through — and their stepping down from a LEGO sequel certainly frees them up — it looks like we may actually have something to anticipate on our hands.
Does the potential involvement of Lord and Miller affect your anticipation of the project?