- May 23rd, 2020, 12:32 am#4935125
I went and looked up some Ramis interviews, and here's some quotes I found:
From an outlet called Film Monthly (http://www.filmmonthly.com/Profiles/Art ... rvest.html):
Gary: I'll get it out of the way. What's with the Ghostbusters 3 rumors?
Harold: You know it came out of interviews for The Ice Harvest. People have been asking for years, "will there be a Ghostbusters 3?" And I went into some detail, saying Danny had written a script and it had some promising concepts. He and I worked on revising it. I was going to direct it. This was years ago. He and I had young Ghostbusters in mind. We were going to return as the bosses.
At AICN (http://legacy.aintitcool.com/node/21858):
Quint: I know you're probably sick of it, but the AICN readers would kill me if I didn't bring up Ghostbusters 3. I know a few years ago it was getting hot and then just seemed to disappear. What's going on with it?
Harold: Yeah, Danny and I actually played around for a while... Aykroyd had a great concept. He called me and said, "I got it. I got Ghostbusters 3." I said, "What is it?" He said, "Ghostbusters go to Hell! This is it!" (laughs)
Quint: So is there a chance that it'll still happen?
Harold: Well, the script was viable. Dan is the most imaginative person. He went off on a tangent. 90% of the movie is a special effect set entirely in Hell, you know. I had a whole different take on it. Really, it was the business that stopped it. I never thought that the public wanted to see the three of us kind of stuffed into our jumpsuits again. I thought we would introduce three new Ghostbusters, but maybe we'd be around as Senior Ghostbusters, running the company or something, but the real adventure would be...and this was so long ago, we were thinking Chris Rock, Chris Farley and Ben Stiller taking over. That would have worked.
And we had the script all worked out. Danny and I had the story and Murray got really... Murray's so cantankerous, you know. Dan called him and said, "Would you be in the movie?" And he said, "I'll be in the movie... but only as a ghost."
Quint: That would have been awesome!
Harold: (laughs) It would have been interesting. So, we even created a story around that. In the end, it sounds greedy, but the deal couldn't be made. We as an entity... Me... well, I'm low man on that totem pole deal-wise, but Ivan, Bill, Danny and me couldn't make a deal with the studio. There wasn't enough left for the studio.
And I can't say my heart was really in it, you know...making the third one.
Finally, over at MovieWeb (https://movieweb.com/exclusive-laughing ... old-ramis/):
MovieWeb: Is there ever any talk or possibility of you and Bill Murray working together again in the future? Might we ever see Ghostbusters 3?
Harold: I think it’s very doubtful. Dan Aykroyd and I tried to get that off the ground once. Dan had a real good idea, I thought it was very funny. He had more energy for it than I did, so he did most of the writing but I said I would direct it if we ever got it going.
(Now, Sony might've come out ahead overall in terms of moving merch that is tied to the brand, but that is not necessarily the same thing, and I definitely think it's fudging to consider that part of the reboot's financial success.)
RichardLess wrote: ↑May 20th, 2020, 5:34 pm That’s a lot of conjecture on your part. Could it have happened that way? Sure. Maybe. I guess. Anything is possible. I think what’s more likely is GB3 went just the way all the other GB movies did before it. (minus the actual getting made part lol)Well, first of all, I shouldn't have said "offered." I meant it in a broad sense. A more accurate way to put what I meant was, the idea of Harold directing it came up as a possibility in conversation between himself, Aykroyd, and Reitman, and Harold considered it a hypothetically interesting challenge and expressed interest in doing it.
“Offering Harold the chance to direct it himself”. Each GB film has started off with Dan doing his own thing, bringing it to Harold/Ivan and then it transforming. This was no different. GB3 was written on spec. That’s why he classifies it as a Hobby. The idea that Harold Ramis, probably one of the greatest comedy writers of all time, would write something like GB3 on spec, tells you everything you need to know. He wasn’t getting paid for this. It was out of a love and passion for the project. I think Harold being interested in directing it was purely out of Ivan not being interested. I mean...Dan offering him the directors chair could be what happened, sure. But was the chair dans to offer? It was probably “how do we get this made without Ivan? Only 1 of us is a talented director”.
I do love that Harold & Dan were working on GB3 together, with no commitment from the studio. No guarantees. Just doing it for the love of doing it. Most established writers who’ve had hits like Harold & Dan don’t write on spec. The ones that do? It tells you something. Writers, established ones, pitch to a studio with maybe an outline, have the studio buy the outline, and then get to work. Or they are under a development deal. Or they’ve been hired for the project. Writing a *sequel* on Spec, is rarer still. I love Dan & Harold keeping the flame alive. Tells you what kind of people they are.
I went and looked up some Ramis interviews, and here's some quotes I found:
From an outlet called Film Monthly (http://www.filmmonthly.com/Profiles/Art ... rvest.html):
Gary: I'll get it out of the way. What's with the Ghostbusters 3 rumors?
Harold: You know it came out of interviews for The Ice Harvest. People have been asking for years, "will there be a Ghostbusters 3?" And I went into some detail, saying Danny had written a script and it had some promising concepts. He and I worked on revising it. I was going to direct it. This was years ago. He and I had young Ghostbusters in mind. We were going to return as the bosses.
At AICN (http://legacy.aintitcool.com/node/21858):
Quint: I know you're probably sick of it, but the AICN readers would kill me if I didn't bring up Ghostbusters 3. I know a few years ago it was getting hot and then just seemed to disappear. What's going on with it?
Harold: Yeah, Danny and I actually played around for a while... Aykroyd had a great concept. He called me and said, "I got it. I got Ghostbusters 3." I said, "What is it?" He said, "Ghostbusters go to Hell! This is it!" (laughs)
Quint: So is there a chance that it'll still happen?
Harold: Well, the script was viable. Dan is the most imaginative person. He went off on a tangent. 90% of the movie is a special effect set entirely in Hell, you know. I had a whole different take on it. Really, it was the business that stopped it. I never thought that the public wanted to see the three of us kind of stuffed into our jumpsuits again. I thought we would introduce three new Ghostbusters, but maybe we'd be around as Senior Ghostbusters, running the company or something, but the real adventure would be...and this was so long ago, we were thinking Chris Rock, Chris Farley and Ben Stiller taking over. That would have worked.
And we had the script all worked out. Danny and I had the story and Murray got really... Murray's so cantankerous, you know. Dan called him and said, "Would you be in the movie?" And he said, "I'll be in the movie... but only as a ghost."
Quint: That would have been awesome!
Harold: (laughs) It would have been interesting. So, we even created a story around that. In the end, it sounds greedy, but the deal couldn't be made. We as an entity... Me... well, I'm low man on that totem pole deal-wise, but Ivan, Bill, Danny and me couldn't make a deal with the studio. There wasn't enough left for the studio.
And I can't say my heart was really in it, you know...making the third one.
Finally, over at MovieWeb (https://movieweb.com/exclusive-laughing ... old-ramis/):
MovieWeb: Is there ever any talk or possibility of you and Bill Murray working together again in the future? Might we ever see Ghostbusters 3?
Harold: I think it’s very doubtful. Dan Aykroyd and I tried to get that off the ground once. Dan had a real good idea, I thought it was very funny. He had more energy for it than I did, so he did most of the writing but I said I would direct it if we ever got it going.
Alphagaia wrote: ↑May 21st, 2020, 3:38 pm Not even counting the digital sales and the rest of the world. Just North America.Look, everyone knows I'm a Ghostbusters (2016) defender, but Sony definitely, unquestionably lost millions of dollars on that movie. The entire reason studios want to make money before video is because video pretty much has no hope of saving an expensive flop. The movie has, almost certainly, not made more than $200m more on video (existing sales data caps out at around $120m), and video of course has its own promotional and production costs, so, yeah, video did not close the gap enough for the movie to have been profitable.
Sony never lost money on ATc. They did want to make bank on just the BO alone, though
(Now, Sony might've come out ahead overall in terms of moving merch that is tied to the brand, but that is not necessarily the same thing, and I definitely think it's fudging to consider that part of the reboot's financial success.)
deadderek, Wafflerobot liked this