Paul Feig Prepares To Start Shooting Ghostbusters

If you’ve listened to our Podcast chat with Paul Feig (find it at the bottom of the page if you have yet to treat your ears to it), you’ll know that at time of recording, he was a few weeks away from starting to shoot his new take on Ghostbusters. The time has arrived, with the director commemorating the occasion in typically well-dressed style. Let’s hope he doesn’t get any of that ectoplasm on his suit...

And as the cameras start to roll on the film starring Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon in Boston (standing in for the film’s New York setting), a few other stories about the movie have emerged, including veteran Ghostbuster and franchise cheerleader Dan Aykroyd praising the direction and the director of the latest incarnation. “It’s going to be hot!” he tells Comic Book Resources. “The new one’s going to be big. The interplay, and with each of them, their individual voices are so well-defined. They’re just such different characters, and there’s a friction. There’s a dynamic there. I’m not going to spoil it for people, but it’s going to be big, big!”

“The thing is, you’ve got creators all around Hollywood who saw the thing at the original time and are going, ‘Wow, I think I’ve got a take on that. I think I could do something under that umbrella.’ And so we’ve had brilliant creators walk in, from Paul Feig to many others. And we loved the concepts they’re coming up with. And this one with the four girls is going to be massive. Oh, man, it’s funny. It’s intelligent. It hits the right notes, and I’m really excited about it. It refers to the first two in a really neat, classy way, but this is all going to introduce them to a whole new generation of girls that are going to want to be Ghostbusters. We always needed them.”

And as for whether Aykroyd’s Ray or any of his surviving team original team members might show up? He’s not saying. “That’s up to the director. If asked, I will show up and be of service. If not, it’s totally fine with me. I leave powerful talent like that alone to do their thing.”

And, while we’re hoping the big surprises are left entirely alone, the Boston Herald got its hands on a basic synopsis for how this take, written by the director with The Heat's Katie Dippold, kicks off. While it’s not exactly bursting with big reveals, we’d caution any spoilerphobes to look away.

The film reportedly finds Wiig and McCarthy as a pair of unheralded authors who write a book positing that ghosts are real. Flash forward a few years and Wiig lands a prestigious teaching position at Columbia U. Which is pretty sweet, until her book resurfaces and she is laughed out of academia. Wiig reunites with McCarthy and the other two proton pack-packing phantom wranglers, and she gets some sweet revenge when ghosts invade Manhattan.

Ghostbusters will be out here on July 22 next year.