Movies
New ‘Ghostbusters’ Just the Beginning of Massive Franchise Reboot
It’s absolutely remarkable the power of a successful film. Marvel has been on an uphill swing over the past few years, with the company hitting an all-time high with Guardians of the Galaxy, a film that’s changed the course of movie history. Guardians of the Galaxy is Marvel’s biggest film, and also the most unknown of all of their franchises, showing that building a “universe” is the modern approach to franchises and remakes. Universal is doing such with their monsters, Disney is kickstarting the Star Wars franchise, and various other studios are thinking long-term.
Now, Dan Aykroyd has the same ambition for the Ghostbusters franchise, although I don’t know how you build a universe around a few central characters – and I don’t see how you make a movie from the perspective of Slimer or Stay Puft.
Via THR:
Speaking in London where he was in town to promote his brand of Crystal Head vodka, the 62-year-old said that had been looking towards some of the bigger franchise models for guidance.
“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?”
Aykroyd said that the entire Ghostbusters team — “the executives, the creatives, Ivan [Reitman, the director] and myself” — were now looking at the next 10 years. Earlier in year Reitman exited the director’s chair for the planned 2015 return, although he is still lined up to produce.
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.”
Using the Ghostbusters car Ecto as an analogy, Aykroyd said that the entire concept was now sitting in the garage without paint, wheels, a motor or transmission. “It’s up on blocks, it needs new electronics, new everything,” he said. “That’s what we have to do. The whole vehicle of Ghostbusters has to be rebuilt. That’s the ambitious thinking that’s going on now. Taking on the model of Marvel where we take all of the elements that are in this movie and we put them out there as different ideas.”
Aykroyd also added that he thought the idea of a female-led Ghostbusters was a possibility for the third or fourth film. “We need to write it,” he said though.
I really love that Marvel has forced studios and execs to “rethink” their franchise plans; it’s forced them to go lateral instead of straight forward. And since the studio has been struggling on this Ghostbusters sequel/revamp for years, maybe this is just what the doctor ordered – they’re already planning an all-female cast to break the mold.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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