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The 'Ghostbusters' Universe May Not Be As Bad As We Thought
Yesterday afternoon, Deadline.com broke news that promptly made the Internet roll its eyes. But some details that arrived later made it sound not quite so bad.
Mike Fleming Jr. over at Deadline announced Sony Pictures new development company called Ghost Corps. The purpose of Ghost Corps? Spearheaded by Ivan Reitman and Dan Akroyd, Ghost Corps will be bringing us a full Ghostbusters cinematic universe. Starting with the “Female Ghostbusters” starring Kristen Wiig, followed by a Channing Tatum starring, Russo Brothers (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) directed second film.
Not a huge shock, given the Marvel-fication of franchise filmmaking these days (EVERYTHING’S GOTTA BE A UNIVERSE! EVERYTHING!), but with certain quotes, everything sounded…well, awful. From the way the article is written, the second film in the series - a “male-centric” version of Ghostbusters, following the female fronted Paul Feig film, made the movie sound like they were kowtowing to the fedora set who complained on Twitter.  Plus, when you use words like “branded entertainment”, it really makes one wonder if quality is the goal above filmmaking.
That said, Devin Faraci at Badass Digest did his due diligence, looking further into the story, and the actual goals sound…far less bad?
From his report, the second film in the series isn’t so much male-centric, as it is intending to star Channing Tatum and real life friend Chris Pratt as the leads. The other leads could be female as well. Additionally, Ghostbusters is more a catch-all for fun, supernatural comedy-action films.  With awesome leads in the front, awesome directors behind the camera, and less shady goals in mind - I can be far more interested.
Not surprisingly, this is then supposed to lead into a third film where the Wiig and Tatum camps team up, and then funnel into an eventual fourth film, which would be a prequel - but would not - yes, not - relate to the original 1984 Ghostbusters or its characters.
Look - I’m still not the happiest camper about this “Universe”. I still believe it may be too much spinning out of too little. But if this means I get a fun Kristen Wiig comedy AND a Channing Tatum/Chris Pratt buddy action movie out of this? Might be worth it after all. Stay tuned.
Tuesday March 10, 2015