Just a few days ago, Magic Mike XXL star Channing Tatum went on record to explain that Sony’s plans for the resurfacing Ghostbusters franchise had gotten rather messy, with all manner of potential projects bubbling away without any framework in place to keep them from stepping on each other’s toes.
Though director Paul Feig will be first out of the gate with a female-led spin starring Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy, Tatum had also been involved at one point in plotting a Ghostbusters reboot with Captain America: The Winter Soldier directors Joe and Anthony Russo. Now, however, it appears that Tatum and company have given up the ghost (sorry).
Talking with ScreenRant recently, Tatum explained that the Ghostbusters property just has too many spinning plates right now, and so it’s been decided to call off his collaboration with the Russo brothers, which would have had a script written by Drew Pearce. “We’re not doing that anymore,” he told the publication, adding, “I think it’s too complicated. There’s a lot of things going on with that brand and I just feel like it’s over-saturated.”
Tatum’s not exaggerating there – Sony reportedly has four Ghostbusters movies in the works, including a prequel, a male-led film and a team-up flick that unites Feig’s Ghostbusters and with the male ones. Tatum and the Russos are very, very busy people, so it makes sense that they wouldn’t commit to waiting around while the studio figures out what it can green-light and what’s bringing Ghostbusters too close to the saturation point that the actor mentioned.
Reading between the lines, the star doesn’t sound too happy with Sony over the whole ordeal – it appears like the studio played Feig’s Ghostbusters and Tatum’s against one another, letting them both gestate and probably emerge with some parallels until it threw support entirely behind Feig’s and left the other film in the lurch. And if there’s one thing everyone in Hollywood should know, it’s this: nobody puts Channing in a corner.
Published: Jun 26, 2015 10:26 am