Dan Aykroyd blames Paul Feig for failures making Ghostbusters reboot: "He spent too much"
The original Ghostbusters star says Sony is now unlikely to make a sequel – because Feig's movie just cost too much
Original Ghostbusters star Dan Aykroyd has said there will be no sequel to 2016's all-female Ghostbusters reboot – because director Paul Feig spent too much.
Aykroyd served as an executive producer on the film, which starred Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon, and said he was "really happy" with how it turned out.
But it wasn't an easy journey getting there, and the film ultimately cost around $144 million to make. It went on to gross $229.1 million at the worldwide box office.
Appearing on Channel 4's Sunday Brunch, Aykroyd, who co-wrote and starred in the 1984 movie, said expensive re-shoots could have been avoided.
"The director, he spent too much on it and he didn’t shoot scenes we suggested to him," he said.
More like this
"There were several scenes that were going to be needed, he said, ‘No, we don’t need them.’ And then we tested the movie and they needed them, and he had to go back — about $30 to $40 million in re-shoots.”
Aykroyd added: “It cost too much, and Sony does not like to lose money. It made a lot of money around the world, but it just cost too much, making it economically not feasible to do another one. So it's too bad... he will not be back on the Sony lot anytime soon."
But according to the Hollywood Reporter, a source close to the production denied there was any bad blood between them, saying: "The studio had an incredible relationship with the director, who was first-rate."
Re-shoots only cost $3-4 million, the source added.
Awkwardly, two days before Aykroyd made his comments, Feig tweeted this...
