Dan Aykroyd Doubts 'Ghostbusters' Sequel Will Happen As Sony Corrects His Budget Numbers

Well, Dan Aykroyd has certainly stirred up the Ghostbusters pot again. Over the weekend, the actor blamed director Paul Feig for trouble behind the scenes that resulted in spending a supposed $30-$40 million on reshoots. Aykroyd even went so far as to say that Feig's blunders during production meant the director "will not be back on the Sony lot any time soon." Harsh, right?

However, Sony Pictures apparently wasn't too pleased with what Aykroyd was saying, mostly because the numbers he put forth for the cost of the reshoots were way off. The studio released a statement correcting his estimates, and it sounds like they might have had a chat with him about his commentary, because he made a post on Facebook that praised Paul Feig, while casting doubt on the potential of seeing a Ghostbusters sequel due to the mistakes that were made.

Just to recap, here's what Dan Aykroyd said about Ghostbusters over the weekend on a British morning chat show:

"The girls are great in it. Kate McKinnon, Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig – what a wonderful, wonderful players they are – and Leslie Jones. I was really happy with the movie, but it cost too much. And Sony does not like to lose money. It made a lot of money around the world but just cost too much, making it economically not feasible to do another one. So that's too bad – the director, he spent too much on it. He didn't shoot scenes we suggested to him and several scenes that were going to be needed and he said "nah, we don't need them". Then we tested the movie and they needed them and he had to go back. About $30 to $40 million in reshoots. So he will not be back on the Sony lot any time soon."

Sony Pictures has since followed up with Deadline and corrected Aykroyd's budget assertions, saying the reshoots only cost between $3 million and $4 million, which is significantly less than the franchise creator said and not really unusual for a studio picture of this size. The question is, could Sony be trying to keep the extra money they spent under wraps or did Aykroyd merely misspeak? It honestly could go either way, but it's silly that this is playing out nearly a year after the movie arrived.

For his part, Dan Aykroyd took to Facebook yesterday and made this post, first pulling back and then doubling down on what he said before, just in a more polite way:

"Paul Feig made a good movie and had a superb cast and plenty of money to do it. We just wish he had been more inclusive to the originators. It cost everyone as it is unlikely Kristen, Leslie, Melissa and Kate will ever reprise their roles as Ghostbusters which is sad."

So it sounds like Dan Aykroyd's frustration with Paul Feig is that maybe he didn't listen to what he and producer Ivan Reitman were telling him during production. Could that be due to creative differences? Possibly, but as Aykroyd said in his first statement, it sounds like Feig didn't listen to suggestions that could have helped the film and made the reshoots a little less cumbersome (at least from Aykroyd's perspective).

Either way, any chatter about what may have gone wrong with the Ghostbusters reboot is a moot point. Whatever mistakes were made, it sounds like we won't get to see Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones, Melissa McCarthy and Kate McKinnon busting ghosts again. That's a bummer, since they were easily the best part of the movie, and there's still a great way for the reboot franchise to connect with the original if a sequel were to get off the ground.