Paul Feig Still Thinks the Female-Lead ‘Ghostbusters’

Four years after his “Ghostbusters” remake with a female-lead forged flopped on the field workplace, Paul Feig nonetheless believes that the backlash the movie spawned needed to do with the bigger political and cultural developments surrounding the 2016 presidential election.

In an interview Friday with SiriusXM, Feig famous that Donald Trump went on the assault in opposition to the movie in January 2015 through an Instagram video posted months earlier than he introduced his candidacy for the White House. “They’re remaking Indiana Jones without Harrison Ford–you can’t do that!” Trump stated in a rant that might echo lots of his marketing campaign speeches. “And now they’re making Ghostbusters with only women. What’s going on?!”

“I think some really brilliant author…needs to write a book about 2016 and how intertwined we were with Hillary [Clinton] and the anti-Hillary movement,” Feig stated. “Everyone was at a boiling point. I don’t know if it was having an African American president for eight years that they were teed up, they were just ready to explode.”

He went on, “It’s crazy how people got nuts about women trying to be empowered or be in positions they weren’t normally in, and it was an ugly, ugly year.”

“Ghostbusters” grew to become a cultural third rail in the summertime 0f 2016, with critics of the movie being accused of sexism, whereas stars of the movie like Leslie Jones acquired on-line harassment within the weeks main as much as the movie’s launch. Ultimately, the movie — which additionally starred Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Kristen Wiig — failed to show a revenue for Sony Pictures, grossing $229 million on the international field workplace in opposition to a $144 million finances earlier than advertising prices. Although reception for the movie was stable with a 74% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a B+ on CinemaScore, “Ghostbusters” discovered itself shedding household audiences and sci-fi followers to better-received movies in theaters like “The Secret Life of Pets” and “Star Trek: Beyond.”

While the reboot might have gone bust, Sony’s going to offer the franchise one other probability with “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” a direct sequel to the primary two “Ghostbusters” movies. It will see the unique male forged reunite in a narrative a few household that strikes to Kansas and discovers their connection to the Ghostbusters when a collection of earthquakes hit their new residence. The movie was set to be launched in July however was moved to March 5, 2021 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Watch Feig’s remarks within the clip above.