“It’s not going to be called Ghostbusters II,” he reveals. "We’ll burn in hell if we call it Ghostbusters II. I’ve suggested The Last of the Ghostbusters, to make sure there won’t be anything like a Ghostbusters III. But the script is nowhere near ready, and we start shooting soon. [Filming, in fact, began at presstime, November 28.] Jeez, more pressure. We’ll figure it out…or we won’t.
“I was the last holdout. They finally just waved too much money in my face?” laughs Murray. "I really didn’t want to do it for all the obvious reasons, but the reasons to do it were obvious, too. With Dan and Harold and Moranis and Sigourney, we really had a ball. That’s really the most fun I’ve had on a movie. It’s the most fun group to be with.
“We weren’t so crazy about making money, or being desperate, and it worked,” he confesses. “Finally, Dan and Harold said, ‘We’ve got some ideas here. What do you think?’ We spent a couple of days talking, and they did have some amazing ideas for this story.”
Shortly before presstime, even Murray couldn’t confirm Sigourney Weaver’s participation in the sequel. In the years since the original Ghostbusters, Weaver (STARLOG #109) has established herself as a major Hollywood force. Based on her Academy Award-nominated performance as Ripley in ALIENS and the financial triumph of James Cameron’s film, producers consider the actress “bankable,” meaning she wields enough clout to see as controversial and uncommercial a movie as Gorillas in the Mist brought to the screen as a vehicle for her. Though Murray jokingly refers to Gorillas as “The Monkey Movie,” Weaver’s star has risen to the point where accepting a minor role in a Ghostbusters adventure could represent Poor career move.
“She’s not even in the cartoon, so I don’t know if she’s going to be in the film,” Murray says. "The original idea was that she would be in it. The ideas they sold me on to say, ‘OK, let’s do it,’ are no longer in the script. Sigourney was one of those ideas.
"They’ve gone all the way around trying to figure out how to make it. I had to audition with some actresses, but we all like Sigourney. The only problem with Sigourney is she’s so tall. Naaah, I’m just kidding. She’s tall, but she’s not too tall. The problem is that you would wind up with a story that was tilted and like the Flintstone family. Sigourney and I would be this major thing and it would be hard to figure out how the Ghostbusters’ dynamic would grow. The sort of story they were writing ended up not really needing the other three guys."
Fortunately, though, matters have been settled. Reached at press time, Weaver confirms she will be in The Last of the Ghostbusters as “they female lead, as far as I know.”
Murray looks forward to the filming – sort of. "Oh, what the hell, " he sighs. "Even if it’s a dog, this sequel’s going to make money because so many people are going to say, ‘Let’s see if they ruined it’ or ‘Let’s see if it’s any good.’ It’s a creative process and that’s all that counts. We’ve got a few weeks yet," Bill Murray notes. "It should be interesting "
