Sony subsidiary Ghost Corps did a terrible job of justifying its own existence until Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife came along, with the production company toying with several ways to reinvent and expand the supernatural comedy franchise, none of which came to fruition.
Paul Feig’s divisive reboot under-performed at the box office and left the fanbase enraged, planned animated series Ecto Force faded into nothingness, while Dan Aykroyd wrote a prequel titled Ghostbusters High, which would have followed Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler, and Peter Venkman meeting as teenagers.
Back in 2014, it was revealed that Channing Tatum had pitched the studio a new spin on the mythology, one that would have seen him partnered up with Chris Pratt. There was even talk that the Russo brothers had signed on to produce, but it never seemed to gain much more traction than that.
However, filmmakers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller confirmed on the Happy Sad Confused podcast that they’d spent a bit of time developing a Ghostbusters movie alongside Ivan Reitman, with their “friend” quite clearly being Jump Street star Tatum.
“I don’t know what we can or should say, but we can say we had a friend who had an idea for a Ghostbusters thing that was great and we developed it for a little bit with Ivan. Then we put it to the side for a bit and I don’t know if it will ever come back, but it was fun. My understanding is that where Jason and Ivan are heading is, first things first, ‘protect the mothership’. Ours was a little more sideways of that.”
Afterlife eventually righted the ship at long last, and will surely be getting a sequel having earned close to $200 million from theaters on a $75 million budget, but the prospect of Lord, Miller, Reitman, Tatum, Pratt, and the Russos teaming up for a Ghostbusters movie is something we’d have loved to see.
