Ivan Reitman Talks About The Future Of The Ghostbusters Franchise

The all-female Ghostbusters remake may not have been a box office hit, but Ivan Reitman, the original film's writer and director, doesn't think that the franchise is anywhere near done yet. In an interview with io9, Reitman talked about his plans for an animated movie and what he thinks went wrong with the reboot.

According to Reitman, the reboot, which stars Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones as the titular ghost fighting team, struggled more with its cost than its quality, although he said there are a few things he would have liked to have seen done differently. "We certainly [would have] loved to have a larger hit," he said. "But considering [Ghostbusters II] was almost 30 years ago, it really did extremely well. I think the film cost too much, frankly, and that's the real issue. I personally had other points of view in terms of where the film should go, and it was kind of a continuous conversation with [director] Paul [Feig] about that. But Paul was the filmmaker on this one and he's a very talented director. I wanted to give him enough room to do the film he thought it should be."

Reitman's comments are fairly positive about the remake, which drew the ire of fanboys everywhere and was the frequent target of accusations of ruined childhoods. He is definitely justified in listing the movie's high budget as one of its faults. The film cost $144 million to make, so the $229 million haul worldwide was still underwhelming for its high price tag. However, despite the critiques, the movie did fare well with critics, earning 73 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, which hints that there is still a lot of potential for the franchise.

Part of that continuation will come through Ghostbusters VR: Now Hiring, a virtual reality experience that will be released on the PlayStation Store. There is also a new comic book series that will be released this week; however, the property most fans are looking for (more movies) will take a bit longer. According to Reitman, while there are more live-action films in development, next up is an animated picture which will hit theaters in either 2019 or 2020. "I want to bring all these stories together as a universe that makes sense within itself," he said. "Part of my job right now is to do that."

We can't help but agree with Reitman that the Ghostbusters universe deserves a few more entries. In fact, we listed it as one of the movie universes that should be expanded.