Just as it seemed the possibility of a revamped Ghostbusters film was dead and buried, director Paul Feig announced he will remake the film in 2016. And his film will have an added twist: the ghostbusters will all be women.
The original film starred Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson as the ghostbuster and wit as a huge box office hit, grossing $295 million worldwide. A sequel was released five years later, and whispers of a third have been rampant ever since.
But when Paul Feig decided to take on the difficult task of remaking a classic, he decided to update it and replace the four male protagonists with female ones.
Enter Bridesmaids stars Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig and Saturday Night Live stars Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon.
The four comedic stars are sure to make a hilarious team, and with any luck will show the industry that female-centred blockbusters are not as untenable as Hollywood’s track record suggests.
As Cate Blanchett pointed out at last year’s Academy Awards, it is time to bust open the myth that “female films with women at the centre are niche experiences”.
“They are not. Audiences want to see them. In fact, they earn money,” she said.
Feig’s decision to replace male stars with female ones in a high-budget Hollywood blockbuster is the perfect way to demonstrate this point. Female films should no longer be niche experiences, but instead should start to populate lists of Hollywood’s highest-grossing and most-watched experiences.
But this casting decision does more than just place women in leading roles instead of men. The plot is about heroic protagonists; highly intelligent men who work hard and eventually save the day. By replacing these specific male characters with females one, Feig is placing women in the centre of a plot that has historically been more male-centric than any other. It demonstrates not only that women can play complex, significant characters in Hollywood films, but also that they can be the heroines of them.
Secondly, not only is the film’s plot driven by strong heroic figures that will now be played by women, it is also a comedy. Hollywood has historically had a particularly pervasive problem with women comedians and comedic actresses. Over the last 10 years, only nine out of the 200 highest-grossing comedies were directed by women. That’s 4.5%. This is another barrier Feig is tearing down (as he did once before when he directed Bridesmaids).
How refreshing it will be to see a Hollywood feature with four smart, strong, funny women driving the plot. They are not love interests or damsels in distress or two-dimensional scene-fillers, but actual leading female characters. Hallelujah!
Feig said he made the decision because he wanted to update the plot to a contemporary setting: “I love the first one so much I don’t want to do anything to ruin the memory of that. So it just felt like, let’s just restart it because then we can have new dynamics. I want the technology to be even cooler. I want it to be really scary, and I want it to happen in our world today.”
His decision to turn the ghostbusters into women was not well received across the board, though. Original Ghostbusters star Ernie Hudson was disappointed:
“If it has nothing to do with the other two movies, and it’s all female, then why are you calling it Ghostbusters?” he said.
“I love females. I hope that if they go that way at least they’ll be funny, and if they’re not funny at least hopefully it’ll be sexy. I love the idea of including women, I think that’s great.”
“But all-female I think would be a bad idea. I don’t think the fans want to see that.”
Captured in Hudson’s comment is the very heart of Hollywood’s woman problem: If they’re not funny, at least hopefully it’ll be sexy.
I don’t know if Ernie Hudson has seen Bridesmaids, but I am looking forward to watching these four hilarious women prove him and his fellow naysayers wrong.