Well, actress Sigourney Weaver is certainly a chatty Cathy as of late. It’s probably because “Ghostbusters” celebrated its thirtieth anniversary last week and now everyone’s getting all misty and nostalgic about the movie (including us, we Ranked The Movies Of Summer 1984 and looked at The 20 Greatest Movie Theme Songs Of The 1980s in its honor). And so in a recent Vanity Fair piece looking back at everyone’s favorite spook busters, Weaver was asked about “Ghostbusters 3.”
Apparently her participation in the film was provisional to her character’s son, from “Ghostbusters II” appearing in the threequel. On returning for the third film she told Vanity Fair, “I said, ‘I have one condition. I want my son Oscar to be a Ghostbuster’, and [Ivan Reitman] said, ‘We’ve already done that.’” Well, there you go, that’s at least one small character detail of the movie.
In case you’ve forgotten – and this writer totally had because “Ghostbusters II” isn’t very good and has never really warranted a second look – in the five years between “Ghostbusters” and its sequel, Weaver’s character Dana Barrett, dumped Bill Murray’s Peter Venkman (c’mon, it was implied they got together, no?), got married, had a kid and got divorced. Oscar, her baby, becomes a major plot point when an evil ghost tries to take over his body.
As “LEGO Movie” and “21 Jump Street” filmmakers Phil Lord & Chris Miller said today — two directors who turned down the job unfortunately (god, they’d be great) — “I think that there’s a good ‘Ghostbusters’ movie out there. It’s such a fun franchise.” It’s true and look at the way they successfully reinvigorated the ‘Jump Street’ franchise. Imagine if they had their way with it? Unfortunately, “Ghostbusters” is too tethered to Dan Aykroyd, Ivan Reitman and the original crew and it feels as if there are too many cooks in that kitchen (Bill Murray won’t be returning and Harold Ramis obviously passed away earlier this year; R.I.P.). If they could only just start over…
Anyhow, “Ghostbusters 3,” or whatever it does end up being called feels like it will eventually happen because Sony is probably convinced there’s more gas in that tank too. Meanwhile, Weaver has been talking up another franchise she was part of — 20th Century Fox’s “Alien” series. While she’s suggested in the past that she’s too old for the series and Ripley should just fade away into the night softly, she’s recently changed her tune somewhat.
Asked about the character recently, Weaver said, “Had we done a fifth one, I don’t doubt that her humanity would have prevailed…I do feel like there is more story to tell.” Weaver knows where she wouldn’t want that story to take place: on Earth with aliens “popping out of a haystack” somewhere in the “French countryside.” She added, “I feel a longing from fans for the story to be finished. I could imagine a situation where we finish telling the story.”
A proper fifth alien film kinda of already came and went; it was supposed to be Ridley Scott and James Cameron working together (the two best director’s in the series, clearly) with Weaver as the star. That ship sailed and Scott moved on to rebooting the series with the sorta-prequel “Prometheus” of which a sequel is coming in 2016 (bet you any money Scott doesn’t return for that film). Even if Weaver is totally game, I wouldn’t put any money on that unless she takes on a new “mentor” role. Weaver is 64 years old and I can’t remember the last time Hollywood had the balls to make a franchise tentpole with a woman older than 50-years-old (to their credit, Weaver was 47 at the time of “Alien: Resurrection”). Would I love to see it happen? Sure. Do I have faith it will? Probably not and I could easily see Fox eventually trying to reboot the series with a younger actress. Unfortunately that’s the way it usually goes, but who knows, maybe there is a studio brass with enough cojones to do it? Check out the video below from Hero Complex.