Looks like the rumours are true: the next Ghostbusters movie will have an all-female cast, and now we know exactly who those actresses will be.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon are all in talks for leads in the reboot, which is being directed by Paul Feig (of Bridesmaids fame) for While some of these actresses are still negotiating the roles, they’re still expected to be in the movie.
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114 responses to “The Four Actresses Who Might Be The New Ghostbusters”
As a huge Ghostbusters fan, I can only hope this whole thing dies in the arse before it gets to cinemas.
I share your sentiments entirely
Skip….
While I want to see another Ghostbusters movie….I dont get why it has to be all female. Its like they are trying to prove a point or use it as a gimmick. Why cant it be a mix of good, genuinely funny actors and actresses. And Melissa McCarthy should only be involved if she is wearing a Stay Puft costume, otherwise she should stay the hell away.
And in saying the above, here are who I would like to see in the team of say 5:
1. Bill Hader
2. Jason Sudeikis
3. Craig Robinson
4. Amy Pohler
5. Olivia Wilde
Lets go a team of 5. One more than the original two movies.
(Coughs) The wicker-man remake
Why does an all female-lead film have to be proving a point or be seen as a gimmick?
because it almost always is.
I agree, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having an all female group.
It’s the writing that matters most.
You asked about ‘an all female-lead film’ in the general sense, but ax’s post wasn’t about any all-female lead film, it was specifically about Ghostbusters, a film, television and comic book franchise with a very well-known cast of lead characters.
This new film is a reboot that seems to throw out all of that existing development and changes things seemingly only for the sake of changing them. It would be like if the JJ Abrams reboot of Star Trek featured Danny Trejo as Captain Kirk or Whoopi Goldberg as Spock. Add in the director whose previous work includes Bridesmaids and The Heat, two movies with very mixed reviews from audiences, and it doesn’t paint a very promising picture and it doesn’t do much to instil confidence that the director is going to make a movie that does the franchise justice.
directed by Paul Feig (of Bridesmaids fame)……………………That’s why!!!!!!
seriously? it hasn’t even been made yet, you’re just assuming it’ll be shit. I mean, you never know, it could be good, and if you’re that big of a fan why not give it a shot, you might be surprised. you’ll only find out if you actually WATCH the damn thing
Think of it this way, this new ghostbuster is like a new star wars movie without jedi. Replaced the Jedi with jar jar binks and his race with lightsaber. Sure it’s funny but it doesn’t feel right.
This doesn’t even make sense. How is it like Star Wars without Jedi? What.
Exactly what the new ghostbusters is trying to achieve. Now you know where the hate is coming from.
So you’re saying this is going to be missing a crucial element of the lore? Which, in this case, is… ghosts? I think that’s highly unlikely, which makes your post complete bullshit.
You are right :P. I was just writing whatever that comes to mind.
But anyway I hope you get what I’m trying to say. It doesn’t feel right.
huh? why’s that? – how on earth would you know what it ‘feels like’, they’re still in casting, it hasn’t even been made yet…..
it kinda seems like your logic goes ‘because female, movie bad’. feel free to elaborate
No, I don’t. As @derrick said, please elaborate why it “doesn’t feel right”. All you know about the movie is that the main cast are all women, so it looks like you’re just being sexist?
@derrick
@cruxis
Not because it is full female cast that it is bad, but rather the director that picked the cast is giving people doubt. Again I emphasize, not because they are female but because of the actress quality.
Just like what happened to the latest Annie remake, changing the character and modernizing a classic is not easy. My fiance who watched the annie movies and annie musical was not impressed at all.
It takes a lot to give faith to fans to remake a classic and the initial cast does not give fans the assurance.
I’ve not seen a movie that had doubtful cast ever succeed. I may not watch as many movie as majority of the people but at this point, I have doubts that the movie will succeed. Of course as a fan I would like it to come back with a bang but…. yeah. Doesn’t feel like it.
I’m actually looking forward for Disney’s new jar jar binks movie.
Yeah, me too.
wut
I am making an assumption based on the evidence so far. You are right, it could be good, but I believe there is a 90% chance it will stink, and that is not a risk worth taking.
Yeah fair enough, each to their own. I just like to actually watch movies / listen to songs / read books before making a call about how good they are. Don’t judge a book by it’s cover and all…
I hate that idiom. I literally judge books by their covers (and the information thereon) all the time. Sometimes you just want something to read without doing heaps of research?
Most book covers exist to entice you to read it. The art on the front, the plot synopsis on the back. I judge all books by their covers.
I even judged phone books by the covers they had, although that was more A-K or L-Z.
ummm…. but if you decide to read it after you’ve only looked at the cover, surely you’re saving your judgement until after you’ve actually finished reading it? (or at least read a bit of it) – you can certainly look at a book cover and see if it’s the type of thing you might be interested in or whatever, (that’s not what the idiom refers to), but for example, it would be fundamentally stupid to rate a book or write a book review without actually having read the book in question
anyway, it’s not like I live by it or anything. I just don’t like being prematurely judgemental if I can avoid it. In particular I’ve seen a lot of movies that I thought were going to be shit because there was nothing else on, and they turned out to be really good. If I’d followed my initial instinct i would have avoided them and missed out. But the reverse is also true, some things look great but turn out to be complete shit. I’ll admit I have no idea how good this new ghostbusters will be, and I am fairly skeptical, but i’ll give it a go.
What are you risking? Your life? It’s just a movie. If it ends up being bad, so what? The other movies were good and it’s not like they’re going to disappear.
As a huge Ghostbusters fan, i’m all for it.
Oh totally agree. The whole rebooting changes is not needed. The new Johnny Storm being black. The plans for a female Thor. It’s all just pissing off fans.
Isn’t the new Female Thor a Mortal woman with the power of Thor, leaving a chance for actual Thor to make a return?
Will this still be an action movie or will this be like sex in the city with ghost… Ghost in the city is what it should be called and not ruin the Ghostbusters Franchise.
I’m not a fan of Melissa McCarthy but the others I can see some potential.
This
100%. Melissa McCarthy has had her time. She plays the same in every comedy. People are over that crap now.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s true. The 2 and a half men type of crowd will probably always be down for some McCarthy dregs movie.
It’s a shame because it probably actually has nothing to do with her other than being typecast because she’s a large woman. She’s probably a decent actor we just don’t get to see it ala McConnaughey
I did see her in St Vincent and she did a pretty decent job in what was really not a comedic role…. so I think she can act. BUT, all her comedic stuff….its all coming across the same way and same sort of roles. Think you are right, when it comes to comedy, she has been typecast already.
Almost every comedy actor come across the same way in all of their roles. Bill Murray included. It’s pretty hard to think of comedy actors that DON’T do this. Ricky Gervais seems to bounce between arrogant and self deprecating, I’m sure there are others but I can’t think of any.
Coz that’s their schtick
She was pretty good in St. Vincent. I’m glad somebody brought that up. Before seeing St. Vincent, I was sure I’d seen everything she had to offer and I was convinced that she was a one-trick pony. But, I’m hoping that in casting her for this film, the idea is to have her play a character that is well balanced instead of just completely over the top. If she is just playing the same character in Ghostbusters as she has in any other comedy she’s been in then this will be enough to turn me off the film.
A shame, because she was very good in Gilmore Girls.
Oh man, she was too… I’d completely forgotten about that. When I looked up the interwebs to see who all these names where that I didn’t recognize, the first thing I saw was that godawful disaster ‘The Heat’. God that thing was horrifying. And to think, before that I actually liked both the leads.
Because that is basis on which they are hired……..It’s usually their standup persona applied to a character.
I can’t think of a single comedian who doesn’t act the same way unless they apply themselves to a serious role. Adam Sandler has played many different characters but always acts the same way, it wasn’t until Punch Drunk Love that we saw him in a different light.
As a huge Ghostbusters fan, I think this would work. Ghostbusters has always been a comedy first and all the actresses in that list are great at the style of comedy that was in the first Ghostbusters movie.
How long after this fails will they blame it on no one wanting to see a new Ghostbusters film rather than them being extremely poor in their casting decisions. Seems like they’re just trying to be ‘edgy’ by having them all be female.
I guess this is just one more reboot/remake of a classic film series that I’ll avoid like the plague. The film studios might get the hint some day
So, apart from them not being men, how exactly is casting women in film ‘edgy’?
Perhaps because all we know about the Movie is that they are all women.
Ghostbusters is a buddy movie about a group of Scientists, researching Paranormal Phenomenon. The actors who did the move where important but their genders where not.
I’d love this movie to be brilliant, I’d love another great Ghostbusters movie. But the fact that they are women seems to be more important than the fact they are Ghostbusters is what I think worries people who like me love the Original two movies.
As long as they have plenty of nods to the original and sequel then I’m game. Speaking of nods, did anyone catch the references to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in Dontnod’s dev diary video for Life is Strange? I thought it was a sterling effort, particularly from French devs.
I’m just waiting for Melissa McCarthy and Kevin James to do a movie together to usher in the apocalypse.
Paul Blart & Pauline Blart: The Great Buffet Swindle
BREAKING NEWS: Atheist’s prove there is no God. Pope concedes defeat as he is unable to comprehend how God would allow the current Ghostbuster’s reboot to still be in development.
Get a load of all the dudes crying foul because women are in this movie.
Or perhaps because its a massive cash in and really doesn’t need a reboot?
But no wait….. Am I crushing your social justice superiority?
Casting women in a film is not social justice, it is a casting descision, you shrieking baby.
I’m pretty sure @mypetmonkey is saying the whole reboot (regardless of who is cast) is unnecessary…
Shrieking baby? Oh wait I don’t think a reboot of Ghostbusters is warranted so I’m now a sexist pig… Thanks for clarifying genius.
Everybody who thinks this is a bad idea is a misogynist.. Got it…. Soldier on white knight!
Only a few posts up
Sure looks like he’s just upset that the cast is female.
“All the dude’s”
But that’s okay let’s weave in a narrative and make the piss poor idea of rebooting a film favourite that is still perfectly fine in this day and age all about misogyny… Not the fact that Hollywood couldn’t be bothered with an original idea.
In that context “All the dudes” doesn’t refer to every one complaining. It refers to everyone complaining because there is an all female cast.
If you’re going to argue semantics, he didn’t say anything about an all female cast either, he said “because women are in the movie”. Probably safe to say nobody here has complained “because women are in the movie”, his post is a strawman.
I’m a Ghostbusters fan crying foul because the studio & producers have opted to reboot it, but have said ‘let’s try to be different from the original films so we’re not compared to them, what’s different to 3 white guys and 1 black guy? 3 white women and 1 black woman.’ I can’t wait to see which of them has the exact same characteristics as the original 4.
I’m just sick of movies being rebooted, thinking they need to jazz it up somehow to be relevant to the 21st century and then completely missing the point of the original film(s). Everything I’ve heard about this so far points to this not being any different.
I’d only be interested in a Ghostbusters 3 if Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson were in it (RIP Harold Ramis). As it is, Bill Murray wants nothing to do with it so the film studio should do the same, but hey, it’s all $$$
Like what?
And because they didn’t go 3 black and 1 white it’s racist…..
And I don’t see any transgender so it’s totally not LGBT friendly…
That’s cool, I agree that reboots are largely subpar compared to the original. However, you’ll find that most people commenting on this are predicting the film will be bad based on the leading roles being played by women.
I think you miss the point.
Hudson’s inclusion in the first was purposefully token. Murray was supposed to be a womanising dingbat. Egon, an anti-social super geek. Aykroyd, a pushover. Hudson’s character was kind of like the deckhand. They all fit into dysfunctional generalisations and made a mockery of many different social constructs, including gender, race, government, capitalism, to name a few.
There’s purposefully trying to appease the social justice crowd in the hope of achieving “progress”, but Ghostbusters was never about that. In fact it was the opposite.
What makes you think that this will be different?
Ok, I’m going to bite. Women are not funny, seriously, it’s not sexist, it’s fact. Have you ever laughed out loud at a female stand up comic? There are biological reasons for this, women have no evolutionary need to be funny, men do. I realise I have dug myself into a hole with this comment… but it’s simply how I feel. There are also other reasons I am hating on this movie, but that’s one of them.
10 years ago I would have agreed with you. However, Amy Poehler in P&R, Tina Fey in 30 Rock and movies like Bridesmaids have changed my mind.
Hahaha ok then. Go back to the cave you came from.
There are plenty of funny women around. Also, this is a movie; they’re not doing stand up so that’s not relevant at all. Stand-up comedy is completely different to acting in a comedic film.
Finally, “It’s not sexist, it’s fact”. Hahahahahahahahaha.
You’d have to add some support for your statement that evolution plays a part in a genders sense of humour, just saying don’t make it true. I could say penguins don’t fly because they are comedic geniuses.
I don’t have any science, and I’m not sure it exists, I could be full of it. However it was a feeling shared by the late Christopher Hitchens, who puts it down to sexual selection, a man simply cannot impress a woman if he isn’t funny, and hence can’t get laid and hence is much less likely to have kids. Women have demanded men be funny for centuries and that’s why, surprise surprise, they have become funnier. This has also lead to a comedy culture for men, we joke amongst ourselves, do stand up, we insult each other in the face all because we collectively as a gender need to pass on and exchange the secrets of being funny. Women don’t need any of that to have sex, so they never developed it.
First up, centuries is a tiny period of time to expect any appreciable evolution to occur. To imply this social convention that “women aren’t funny” is evolutionary is stretch to say the least. I think a more likely (and evidence-supported) scenario is that men have historically held a privileged position, likely afforded to them by the strength that higher testosterone levels impart. This put men at the top of societies, and allowed them to call the shots, which in turn allowed them to be the centre of attention, and allowed them to be the ones making the jokes. Often, being able to joke is very much tied to status, like how a manager is likely to be able to get away with joke in a big meeting than standard employee. In contrast, due to the long instituted power dynamics, women have traditionally held a lower status, and as such have been expected to be silent and obedient. This doesn’t mean they aren’t thinking funny things, but many are being bound by the long ingrained hostility towards a ‘loud’ woman that so much of society still frowns upon. I for one, am glad to see that social boundary being broken down.
Also, read Oglaf (NSFW) or Hark! A vagrant, and then tell me women aren’t funny.
Now that’s got me thinking, many people dislike the bluntness of Christopher Hitchens, and dislike his points of view, some of his I disagree with. I will have to look into it.
lol that, although seemingle logical, makes no sense whatsoever. Women joke amongst eachother (and amongst men) also. Just because you don’t find women funny (which is absolutley your right) doesn’t mean they are objectively not funny to anyone, ever (which I inferred as your meanding when you say ‘it’s a fact’).
Then it’s… not fact. If you have nothing to back it up apart from this one guy said so. Also holy shit…
…are you from the reality that a woman just has to put her hand up to get laid or something??
You’re from a reality where they don’t? Have you heard of Tinder? All the single girls I know have sex on tap anytime they want it.
Yes I am. This reality. Where, as hard as some dudes find it to believe, girls don’t actually have “sex on tap”. You have a bizarre misconception of what the real world is like if you genuinely believe that’s what this world is, I must say.
come on, it’s not bizarre at all. If a girl is putting herself out there on dating sites she will soon be sick of guys talking dirty and wanting to meet up for sex, you just have to get on any dating site to read the profiles saying “if you’re just interested in sex don’t bother” or “sick of players”. maybe if her standards are super high, or she is not attractive, she will struggle, but in general guys will hump anything that moves, and they will go to extreme lengths to achieve this.
We need some sources up in here to support your so-called “facts”, m8.
Women = Social Justice Conspiracy.
This is the internet.
The thing about Ghostbusters is that if Bill Murray isnt involved, then its not really Ghostbusters. Thats the reason why they couldn’t get GB3 off the ground years ago.
My first thought after the thought of a new Ghostbusters, from good old Sigourney Weaver in Aliens “Burn Baby, Burn!”
I was hoping they’d get Kristen Wiig. But I was also hoping they’d get Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to join her.
I’d love Amy Poehler in this.
Agreed – get at least some group dynamic, with people who’ve worked together before, like the original.
But this seems more like they hired whoever said yes.
Multiple Saturday night live comedians, multiple people from bridesmaids inc the director so they certainly have worked together before
Were they on there at the same time, though? Does 3-minute sketch work carry over to a 90+ minute movie?
What movies before Ghostbusters was Dan Aykroyd or Ernie Hudson in with either Bill Murray or Harold Ramis or each other?
Dan, Bill and Harold knew each other going back to the early 70s, all being in the Second City improv group together.
Ernie, I’ll give you that – But Winston was barely a character, after they essentially wrote him out when Eddie Murphy dropped out. He drives around with Ray for a few scenes, and comes along for the finale. I can’t even remember him getting much to do in the sequel.
When were they in the Second City improv group together? They were all in that group in different years.
By memory, someone mentioned it in an interview – but looking for it now shows Bill and Dan were the same year, and Ramis a few years before them. The list only has the year they joined, though, and has a vague “Ramis returned for a short while” note without saying when. (Edit: Wikipedia says he came back the year before they joined, and left 2 years later.)
Maybe the interviewee meant they were introduced backstage or something.
@dustwind
They were in the same year in different cities. Murray was in Chicago. Aykroyd was in Toronto. The next year Aykroyd moved to Chicago but Murray had moved to New York to join The National Lampoon Radio Hour. The year after that Aykroyd moved to New York and helped start SNL. You know, the place you seem to be so dismissive of for working together? Sure, they might have hung out together and ran around in the same circles but acting like their experience together is not comparable to what the new casts experience together is pretty ludicrous.
Then we’ve got conflicting info… “Second City” makes it pretty obvious it’s Chicago-based, I don’t know about any sideshows they might have done in Toronto.
But I’ll ask my first question again – were the women on SNL at the same time?
@dustwind
Second City was in Toronto since 1973. Aykroyd was one of the first members which would make sense since he was from Canada.
Kate McKinnon has been on SNL with both Leslie Jones and Kristen Wiig.
I have no idea who any of these women are other than Melissa McCarthy, but I would totally be up for checking it out if it had those two in it.
http://youtu.be/iabC7-9YUG4
My god I’ve joked that you guys must be writing these articles on your phones. But this evidence is cruel. You missed the “a” key, hit shift and made “while” capitalised instead of putting an “a” before it, you can only do that on touchscreens. At best, this was written on a Surface…
Either that or it was written, proof-read, rearranged, and an accidental word was left in. The sentence is meant to read:
You could be right, or it could just be that they’re human and made a mistake.
I hope so, I love Kotaku, LH and Giz, just not their editing.
I have no information about this movie other than the casting and don’t really understand why people are so mad. Is there any evidence it will suck or is it opposition to the idea of a reboot?
Seems to be mainly opposition to a reboot, with a side of disbelief that women are the leads.
Can’t say that I’m keen on the idea, but it’s not like the existence of the new movie(s) would erase the existence of the old. If it sucks, I won’t see it and they’ll mothball the franchise for a while. If it’s good, then I’ll go see it and yay!
No thanks
Here’s a summary of the arguments against the Ghostbusters reboot and new female cast along with my responses:
“I’ll only accept the original cast.”
– Well, Harold Ramis has passed away and Bill Murray doesn’t care so too bad.
“Women eeewww.”
– I don’t see any reasons why the cast can’t be female. It’s a science fiction/supernatural fantasy, not a movie about (for example) dock workers or coal miners where females would be less realistic. Also, there really isn’t a substantial Ghostbusters canon that would be ruined by the change in gender.
“They’re not hot.”
– Have seen this statement on another forum. Hate to break it to you, but the original cast of Ghostbusters were hardly the Bradley Coopers of their time.
“Don’t ruin the original movie for me!”
– Sorry, Ghostbusters 2 already did that by falling victim to the curse of crappy sequels.
In conclusion, there’s no guarantee that the movie won’t be awful (someone please euthanise the rebooted Transformers movies), but the above reasons are shouldn’t be the cause of it. Cast chemistry (which is difficult to predict), screenwriting and trying too hard to replicate the original cheesiness would be the more likely culprits.
After digging for more information, apparently the screenwriting is by Katie DIppold that wrote The Heat and Parks and Recreation. Maybe the story will be alright but who knows what will happen if she was to “change” the script due to some “issue”.
What does this even mean?! You could say this same thing about every other movie being made right now and every movie that will be made in the future. If anyone was to change anything to any-freaking-movie, there’s always a risk that something will happen to ruin it.
Like The Hobbit?
What about it?
Well just look it up. It was so bad that tolkien’s family will not allow any Tolkien works to be made to movie anymore.
Except the difference is, this movie has no previously established plot. They’re not adapting a book, they’re writing a script from scratch.
Yes you are right. I’m just sceptical that is all. She seems to be a good screenwriter. The Heat was a good comedy, not to mention parks and recreation.
Don’t worry about it, I’m just thinking about how the script will be changed so much by hollywood internal politics and the movie come out with shit plot.
You forgot to add that the previous movies will still exist in exactly the same way they have for the last few decades whether this movie gets made or not.
This is what gets me the most. Making this movie isn’t going to record over all existing copies of precious Ghostbusters media. Also this isn’t A Clockwork Orange. These people aren’t going to be tied to a chair with their eyes wired open and forced to watch it.
(If they are they probably need to reconsider their social group or, alternately, their kink is not my kink etc)
Of course someone has to trot out the ol’ ‘women aint funny’ chestnut, and hilariously it’s someone who calls himself ‘Omega Man’. There is so much to love about Omega Man’s quote, especially the fact that his proof is literally “I don’t laugh at female stand-up comedians”.
Why do the guys who keep spreading this BS always use this as their checkmate? It’s like, don’t you have any women in your life who make you laugh? And if you legitimately don’t, sux to be you cause funny girls are the best.
But if the existence of objectively funny female stand-ups is the black box you’re clinging to, then cool: Tig Notaro. Sarah Silverman. Maria Bamford. Claudia O’Doherty. Jenny Slate. Kristen Schaal. Shelby fero etc etc etc.
Now, if you keep your arms crossed and insist that they’re not funny while the rest of us are doubled over laughing at their well-loved lols, who’s the one with no sense of humour?
There’s something strange, in the neighbourhood…. O_o