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Can 'Ghostbusters' Use The Marvel Franchising Model?

This article is more than 9 years old.

Can Ghostbusters scale?

Dan Aykroyd, ever keeping the flame alight for those who hope to see a new installment in the Ghostbusters franchise definitely thinks so.

In an interview discussing the forever-stalled Ghostbusters III with The Hollywood Reporter, Aykroyd expressed his desire for the Ghostbusters to become more like a modern day mega franchise:

"It’s beyond just another sequel, a prequel, another TV show. I'm thinking what does the whole brand mean to Sony ?" he said. "What does Pixar and Star Wars mean to Disney? What does Marvel mean to Fox ?"

The co-writer of the original, Aykroyd is the one whose family obsession with the paranormal added that extra special twist to the four men forced to work in a very bizarre job in New York City. It’s an action comedy, it’s a creature feature, it’s a New York movie - a triple threat for any single installment. Ghostbusters II, also written by Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd, missed the mark on the action comedy and doubled down on the creature feature and New York City elements to contrive a way for the Statue of Liberty to walk to Manhattan Island to a remix of Jackie Wilson’s “Higher and Higher.”

In 1986, between the two films, Columbia pictures worked with Ramis and Aykroyd to create The Real Ghostbusters, a cartoon version of the property and managed to make and sell some toys based on a kinder, softer versions of the Ghostbusters characters. After the second movie, Sony Pictures Television created Extreme Ghostbusters, set in the late 90s, where Ramis’ Egon character was the only original Ghostbuster left, training a younger generation of college students to catch ghosts in New York.

Most notable of the many video game adaptations were 2009’s Ghostbusters: The Video Game, which served as a direct sequel to the films with Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Bull Murray, Ernie Hudson, William Atherton and Annie Potts reprising their roles through voice acting. The game’s plot was set in 1991, 2 years after the events of Ghostbusters II and picks up with the Ghostbusters as city contractors chasing after the spirit of Ivo Shandor, the head of the Cult of Gozer, the unearthly antagonist from the first movie. The video game received a sequel set in 2010 with Ghostbusters II character Janosz Poha (portrayed in the film by Peter MacNicol) getting sucked into another ancient deity’s plot and the original Ghostbusters are forced to hire a younger team of four 'busters.

The Ghostbusters also gave birth to original comic adventures that further muddied the canon while expanding the story world. In 2003, Sony lent the property to 88MPH Studios for a comic series called Ghostbusters: Legion that updated the timeline so the events of the original film took place in 2004, not 1984. The four-issue mini-series took place entirely between the narratives of the two movies. TokyoPop released a series of English Language Manga comics to promote the 2009 video game that featured Ghostbusters II character Jack Hardemeyer (played Kurt Fuller in the movie) attempting to get revenge on the Ghostbusters for the perceived slights suffered as pink slime flowed through the streets.

Already, Ghostbusters is showing signs of being an emerging mega franchise. The 30th Anniversary re-release of the film has done a respectable $3.6 million in 19 days on under 1,000 screens according to Box Office Mojo and the 30th Anniversary, plus a sudden resurgence in discussion about Ghostbusters III makes a 10-year plan like the greater superhero franchises have in place seem possible if not a little ambitious.

The problem comes when the most successful entries into the franchises’ bank accounts involve a cast of four comedians who aren’t motivated at this point in their career to attempt catching lightning in a bottle for the second time. The magic in the original film, the magic that has been difficult if not impossible to replicate in other versions of the story world, is the chemistry between the lead Ghostbusters. Since the film’s 20th anniversary when Bill Murray was rumored to be the only hold-out amongst the original ‘busting four - “Bill Murray isn't interested, he doesn't like sequels,” Ernie Hudson supposedly told a reporter after completing an interview for HBO’s Oz. Directly after that rejection, Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd entertained the idea of adding a new roster of comedians like Ben Stiller to the Ghostbusters, letting the original team fade out and make way for a new generation.

Things went silent until the end of the decade when a new script by the writer-producers of The Office got Sony thinking about reviving the franchise once again. Bill Murray seemed to be the holdout as Aykroyd promised that the movie was going to enter production. A series of events and rotating writers meant that the script Bill Murray wouldn’t be a part of got re-written at least twice before Harold Ramis’ death in February caused a new version of musical chairs for the creative team in charge of Ghostbusters. As recently as last month, Paul Feig was rumored to be in talks to take over the franchise for a lineup of all-female Ghostbusters, immediately causing fan lists of dream casts to flood all available digital outlets.

The question, now, is what makes a successful Ghostbusters franchise installment? To hear Dan Aykroyd talk to The Hollywood Reporter: it’s the four original characters:

He added that the focus must be "not just another movie or another TV show, but what’s the totality of it? The whole mythology from the beginning of their lives, the end of their lives. Ghostbusters at nine years old, Ghostbusters in high school.”

Where as an Easter Egg in Ghostbusters: The Video Game combined with the Feig rumors point another direction forward.

In the game, there’s a child’s drawing taped to a shelf that features a stick figure using a proton pack and reads: “To Uncle Egon, from Ed”

That is a reference to a fan-made Ghostbusters property, one that spawned two non-profit fan films and a series of fan comics. Ed is Ed Spangler, a nephew of Egon who would go on to form the Denver Ghostbusters in director Hanx Braxtan’s Freddy Vs. The Ghostbusters and Return of the Ghostbusters. The second film is less of a fan-mashup joke and more of an 85 minute feature with slightly-derivative but new characters in a Ghostbusters storyline involving the consequences of looking into an open ghost trap. By referencing it in a video game meant to be a direct sequel to the movies, it raises the interesting option of future Ghostbuster franchises that are associated with another metropolitan city.

The idea that the fictional business of Ghostbusters would franchise to become profitable, mixed with references to the original team isn’t that far off from what Disney is doing with both Marvel and Star Wars storytelling, with the added benefit of having the original cast members for the latter. If the live action Ghostbusters movies move forward by using the selling-power of the franchise name to assemble promising comedians associated with regional comedy in American cities while the other arms of the mega franchise connect with ideas like “Ghostbusters in high school,” that might be enough to re-engage older fans while presenting something recognizable to newcomers.

But, is Dan Aykroyd the man to push this new wave of Ghostbusting forward? Sony seems to desperately want a fresh perspective on the new movie, but incapable of getting production started in earnest. Ultimately the question boils down to: Who you gonna…

…yeah, you know the rest.