"I'm going to chug vodka from this skull and punch a girl," he seems to be saying.

If you read movie news at all, and God help you if you do, you probably saw yesterday’s story about Dan Aykroyd saying that writers Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg* (The Office, Year One) had done “a strong first draft” of Ghostbusters 3 that he was “excited about working on.”  A bunch of sites took that to mean Aykroyd was rewriting the script, which seemed strange, because A., if everyone was as happy with the script like he said, why would he need to rewrite it?  And B., because Dan Aykroyd seems a bit nutty these days.

Anyway, the reason there are a million Ghostbusters 3 stories going around is the same reason there are a billion Arrested Development movie stories going around — lots of people involved. For the project to go forward, all the original players have to agree: Aykroyd, Ivan Reitman, Harold Ramis, and Bill Murray.  In order to make it, the studio (Columbia/Sony) has to keep everyone feeling like they’re involved, which is why the story seems to change depending on who you talk to.  I asked a source close to the project who I trust about it, and this was the update I got:

Aykroyd is involved enough that the studio will listen to his input, but he’s NOT doing a rewrite of the script, which the director (Reitman) and studio (Columbia) are already happy with.

Stupnitskenberg are currently the only writers on the project and as of now the studio has no plans to replace them

Ramis, Reitman, and Aykroyd have all signed on, and the script is going out to Bill Murray now.

Without Murray, there’s no movie. (And he’s always seemed pretty wishy-washy on it, but that’s kind of his thing).

If he agrees, pre-production will start early next year for a late spring/early summer start date and a Thanksgiving or Christmas 2012 release.

I usually try to stay away from the he said/she said stories about projects that have a million people involved, because honestly, I don’t care enough about any movie to write 10 separate speculative stories and corrections.  Sometimes I think the world would be a better place if everyone was as lazy as me.  But other times I think, hey, I wonder what’s on TV. Hey, I should go jerk off and eat a sandwich.

*I heard they once spike stripped Kurtzman and Orci at the annual male screenwriter duo tandem bike race.  Meanwhile, both teams agreed Hawk and Ostby are total fruitcakes.

  Picture source and more pictures/details: BenHeck

Daily Circle Jerk Links:

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• Harold Ramis Responds to the Groundhog Day Timeline Study |Heeb|
• How Towns Used To Be Named.  When in doubt, name your town a dick joke. |CollegeHumor|

~ robopanda

I’ve got the new trailer for Year One after the jump.  It’s got a solid cast (Cera, Black, David Cross, Paul Rudd) and was co-written by Office writers Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky, but it was also directed by Harold Ramis, whose last three movies were the Ice Harvest, Analyze That, and Bedazzled (yes, a Brendan Fraser joint).  The setting should provide lots of material, but let’s hope they avoided the annoying LET’S WRITE 50 GAGS INTO EVERY SCENE! tendency.  That only works in porno.
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Rumors have been circulating that a third Ghostbusters movie is going to be made with the original castmembers Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson. Pajiba has a good summation of the rumors leading up to last Friday. And IGN reports:

Columbia Pictures has tapped the Emmy-nominated writing team of Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky (co-executive producers of The Office) to pen the screenplay.

Now Harold Ramis has respoded to the rumors in an email to The Chicago Tribune:

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