Though the road through development hell has been long, painful and littered with rejected drafts, Sony isn’t quite ready to drape a shroud over its attempts to make Ghostbusters 3. The studio has now hired one of the many who cobbled together Men In Black 3, Etan Cohen, to take a crack.
Word that there would be a new keyboard sheriff in town first began to spread last week, when Dan Aykroyd talked about finding a new writer while he was at a signing appearance.
Cohen is certainly credentialed when it comes to blockbuster comedy: he’s either written or contributed to the aforementioned MIB 3, Tropic Thunder, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa and Idiocracy. Plus his script-doctoring fingerprints are on many other screenplays.
But all that won’t count for much in the eyes of Ghostbusters fans if he doesn’t deliver, and so far the stewing blend of sequel and reboot – with Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson handing over the proton packs to a new, younger generation of spirit catchers – hasn't worked out. Plus there’s the massive stumbling block of Bill Murray, who Sony wants involved and who has seemingly either ignored or rejected previous scripts by Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky. Can Cohen stand tall in the face of the Murricane? Keep watching this space...