UPDATE: Ivan Reitman, producer of next year's Wiig "Ghostbusters," sounds really annoyed that screenwriter Drew Pearce is talking about Sony hiring Pearce to develop a separate "Ghostbusters" project:
"There is only one new Ghostbusters movie and that is the Paul Feig directed version coming next July, presently filming and going fantastically. The rest is just noise."
Pearce subsequently tweeted:
"I've only written a bible (because I have to go off and direct my own stuff). No script yet."
ORIGINAL POST:
Dan Aykroyd is in the Kristin Wiig-Melissa McCarthy “Ghostbusters,” but he’s not depicted as the CEO of Ghostbusters Industries and no one in next year’s movie appears to be calling him Ray Stantz. Apparently he plays a cab driver who picks up Wiig’s character, and they share this exchange, which I’d find funny no matter who was cast as the cabdriver:
AYKROYD: I ain’t ‘fraid of no ghosts!WIIG: That’s a double negative. That means you are afraid of ghosts.
Though the 2016 movie may make it impossible, my heart wants to believe that Ray is just pretending to be a cabdriver and he’s been secretly tailing the female ghostbusters.
(And it’s not the craziest idea ever; look at how they handled the James Garner character in Mel Gibson’s “Maverick” movie.)
Another guy who likes the idea of a shared Ghostbusters universe is Drew Pearce, the “Iron Man Three” screenwriter who has a shared story credit on the “Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation” movie landing in American cinemas in just a few hours.
Pearce has been hired by Sony to work on a script for a non-Wiig/McCarthy Ghostbusters that Pearce hopes will star real-life buddies Chris Pratt and Channing Tatum – and Pearce wants his Ghostbusters movie to share a universe with Wiig’s Ghostbusters.
“My personal inclination is to try and make everything occur in the same Ghostbusters universe, because I feel, as a fan, that’s what I would want,” Pearce told MTV at the “Impossible” premiere in Manhattan. “Standing here in New York, you just wanna tie it all together. Whether that happens or not we’ll see, but I’ve certainly given them the tools to do that, I hope.”
Pearce fell short of saying that the shared universe would happen, but one does wonder how two teams of Ghostbusters would work. Would the Pratt and Tatum characters be copycats, ripping off Wiig and McCarthy’s copyrights and patents? Or would Pratt/Tatum just be working for the same giant corporate Orkin-like entity that employs the Wiig/McCarthy team as well?
Find all of MTV’s interview with Pearce here.
