“The third one could happen.” How is that for a response? That’s exactly what was brought out of Bill Murray when asked at an October 3rd press conference for his new movie, “City of Ember,” what the chances of a third “Ghostbusters” film were.
It isn’t much obviously, but considering the usually cantankerous and dismissive Murray didn’t wave the concept off and say, “go fuck this idea in the ass,” we should all consider this as potentially an optimistic news. Murray’s been pretty vehement in the past that he hasn’t been interested in a second sequel to “Ghostbusters,” but these new writers might have changing his tune ever so slightly.
When we heard that Columbia Pictures was exercising the idea of a third installment to the “Ghostbusters” franchise, we had our doubts about the quality of the project, to say the least. Since we loved the original, and were disappointed with the second, we assumed the third would be the equivalent to the fourth Indiana Jones flick, a real shitty excuse for aging legends to regress back to their glory days.
But now that Columbia has two scribes from hilarious comedy show, “The Office” on board to write the script, Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky (they’ve also written “Year One,” a project directed by “Ghostbuster” alumni Harold Ramis) it seems that it could be the sequel everyone has been waiting for since the first movie ended. Murray certainly seems to believe that the new writers could capture the humor that made the first “Ghost Busters” great, “It’s a great idea that they have hired these two guys to do it, because I think it’ll be…it could be a fresh look at it. And it could be funny.” Coming from the most unenthusiastic person on the planet, that could be quite the endorsement.
For Murray, it could be a chance to right the wrong he considers “Ghostbusters 2” to have been. “We did a sequel, and it was rather unsatisfying for me, because the first one to me was the goods.” And how.