Ramis not only co-starred in the classic Ghostbusters and the unnecessary Ghostbusters II, he was instrumental in turning costar Dan Aykroyd’s bloated, hallucinatory first draft of the screenplay, written as a starring vehicle for John Belushi, into a streamlined, immensely quotable script tailored to the skills of Bill Murray, Aykroyd, and Ramis himself.
But despite Ramis being central to the original’s success, and Murray’s repeated insistence he won’t do the film, the idea of Ghostbusters III persists, a focused, non-terminal repeating phantasm of a movie that’s not really alive, but refuses to go into the great beyond. At present, Ivan Reitman is back on board to direct, and The Office writers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky are hard at work on a script. The unnamed studio exec seems to think excising a planned appearance by Ramis won’t be a problem, saying, “He was always great to bounce [ideas] off of, and that will certainly be missed… but it won’t affect the script.” He then skipped over Ramis’ casket while thrusting his hands into his pockets and whistling loudly to himself.
