While millions of people took to the internet to debate whether or not it was bad to create a new Ghostbusters film with an all-female cast, it seems like no one focused on the big question, can we make a movie that is at least as good as the original? Now that film is in the rearview and the toys are in the clearance bin (they actually started showing up there before the movie even came out), and it’s time to look to the future.
We know that the future plans for the franchise include a spin-off of reboot which is supposed to star Chris Pratt and Channing Tatum as well as a stand-alone animated film. Now, Ivan Reitman has given us a little bit of news about his plans for the latter of the two, but that was after he gave his two cents on last year’s reboot:
“We certainly would’ve loved to have a larger hit,” Reitman, who produced the new movie, told io9. “But considering the last film was almost 30 years ago, it really did extremely well. I think the film cost too much, frankly, and that’s the real issue. I personally had other points of view in terms of where the film should go and it was kind of a continuous conversation with Paul [Feig] about that. But Paul was the filmmaker on this one and he’s a very talented director. I wanted to give him enough room to do the film he thought it should be.”
On the future of the franchise, here’s what he had to say:
“We jumped into an animated film [after the last movie] and we are developing live-action films,” Reitman said. “I want to bring all these stories together as a universe that makes sense within itself. Part of my job right now is to do that.”
He hopes the animated film will be in theaters in either 2019 or 2020 but can’t say for sure. “It depends on on how fast we can get it all together,” he said. “It’s hard to make an animated film.” Rather unsurprisingly, Reitman remained tight-lipped about the live-action films.
If I had my two cents, I’d scrap the universe building and stick with making good stories.