Dan Aykroyd Working On 'Ghostbusters 3' Script

Will there be a Ghostbusters 3, or will there not be? According to everyone but Bill Murray, the project is definitely happening. Mr. Murray has called it a crock, a myth, and just about every other unkind word a gentleman might use. More specifically, he has disparaged the talents of The Office writer/producers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, who penned the first Ghostbusters 3 draft after writing the bomb Year One.

Dan Aykroyd was recently asked about his reaction to Mr. Murray's comments, and in his answer he offered not so much a defense of Msrs. Stupnitsky and Eisenberg, but a defense of the script, which he's now working on directly.

Dan Aykroyd had this to say about Ghostbusters 3 while promoting his Crystal Head vodka:

I think [Bill Murray] was concerned that the writing on Ghostbusters 3 by these guys would not be up to standard, but I can tell you firsthand, I'm working on the script now and those two—Stupnitsky and Eisenberg, [writer-producers of The Office]—wrote Bill the comic role of a lifetime, and the new Ghostbusters and the old are all well represented in it...we have a strong first draft that Harold [Ramis] and I will take back, and I'm very excited about working on it.

Based on that quote alone it almost sounds fair to say that Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis will be doing the second draft of the sequel. The lingering question after the script is hammered out — which is no small task, but certainly one for which Dan Aykroyd has a tremendous amount of enthusiasm — is whether Sony can manage to have the film directed by someone other than Ivan Reitman, who has a contractual bind on the director's chair.

[Vanity Fair via Cinematical]