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The director of the first two Ghostbusters movies has decided that he will not be behind the camera for the third installment of the series following the death of Harold Ramis. After attending Ramis’ funeral last month, Ivan Reitman decided that he would no longer be able to direct the film, although he will stay on as a producer. Reitman also said that he will assist in the search for a new director in the hope of beginning to film the flick in early 2015.
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“There has been all kinds of stuff, unofficially written about Ghostbusters,” Reitman told Deadline.
“I’ve been reading things online for about four years, speculation on who’s writing, what they’re writing, who’s in it, who we will use, and who’s directing. We’d decided not to comment up till now, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, and it was never clear what Bill was going to do. A lot of things happened in the last few months, the most significant of which was the passing of Harold, who was a very good friend who was extraordinarily influential in my career. We did five movies together including both Ghostbusters.”
Ramis played Egon Spengler in the 1984 original Ghostbusters as well as its sequel in 1989 alongside other stars like Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray. Ramis died last month at the age of 69 after battling autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis for a number of years.
"When I came back from Harold’s funeral, it was really moving and it made me think about a lot of things," Reitman said. "I said I’d been thinking about it for weeks, that I’d rather just produce this Ghostbusters. I told them I thought I could help but let’s find a really good director and make it with him. So that’s what we’ve agreed will happen. I didn’t want all kinds of speculation about what happened with me, that is the real story."
It appears that Murray is unlikely to reprise his role as Dr. Peter Venkman in the new film as he "never actually said no, but he never said yes," according to Reitman.
[Deadline Hollywood] [BBC]
