The saga of the long-in-development Ghostbusters 3 is familiar to most movie geeks by now, considering sites like ours have been writing about this godforsaken movie for years. Despite the fact that it’s been more than 20 years since the lackluster Ghostbusters II, apparently Sony is hellbent on getting a sequel made so they’ve hired Tropic Thunder screenwriter Etan Cohen to take a crack at it next.
In 2008, “The Office” writers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky were brought on to revive the franchise, but disagreements over the script led to the project getting bogged down in development hell. Bill Murray said he refused to do the project, Dan Aykroyd wandered around telling everyone who would listen that he still wanted to do it (because, honestly, what else does that dude have going on?), and so it went. Then, strangely, Murray started talking a bit more openly about the project and giving diehard fans the tiniest sliver of hope by saying (and I’m paraphrasing here) that the script wasn’t quite there yet and that they’d go back to the drawing board. Seemed like a strange thing for him to say after Aykroyd implied that he’d recast the role of Peter Venkman with another actor if Murray refused to play ball.
But now, after much back and forth and turmoil, we arrive at Sony Pictures making the decision to bring on Men In Black 3 and Tropic Thunder writer Etan Cohen to tackle the script and try to breath some new life into this tired conversation. I really enjoy about half of Cohen’s work (did you know he wrote a couple episodes of the terrific kids TV show “Recess”?), so from my perspective he’s got about a 50/50 chance of pulling this off. But I’d actually decrease those odds simply because this is Ghostbusters 3 we’re talking about, and the older these guys get, the less likely it is that anyone will care to see them don those proton packs for a third time.
Do you think Cohen will be able to finally get this movie in a position to be made?
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