We’ve Seen the Last of the Original Ghostbusters, According to Dan Aykroyd

The recent batch of Ghostbusters movies — not including the 2016 reboot that Sony has decided doesn’t exist, it seems — introduced the world to a new group of ethically-questionable paranormal cops, played by Carrie Coon, Paul Rudd, Mckenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard. But it also incorporated the surviving members of the original Ghostbusters team (minus Rick Moranis who had better things to do). 

The most recent entry in the series, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, was a modest box office hit earlier this year, making just over $200 million on a budget of $100 million. While it remains to be seen if the franchise will continue (Coon recently revealed that she’s yet to see a script for a follow-up), if we do get another Ghostbusters movie, it will probably be without the original cast.

While speaking with The New York Post, franchise co-creator, and chief Ghostbusters hype man, Dan Aykroyd suggested that he may have hung up his jumpsuit and proton pack for good. When asked if he and the other OG Ghostbusters would return for another movie, he responded, “I don’t see that coming. I don’t see where they would need us to carry it on,” adding, “They’ve got a whole new cast, and they’ve got whole new ideas.”

While Aykroyd didn’t offer any specifics, he theorized that the new movies would “move on to advancing it beyond the originals, which they should.”

This is a little surprising coming from Aykroyd, considering that he’s spent the better part of the past 30 years trying to get Ghostbusters projects made. It’s also a little disappointing because Frozen Empire actually used the legacy cast fairly well, unlike its predecessor. Ghostbusters: Afterlife randomly introduced Aykroyd and his old castmates in the final minutes of the movie. They weren’t characters, so much as they were props for nostalgia-hungry movie-goers to gawk at.

They used computers to bring Harold Ramis back from the dead, but couldn’t figure out a way to CGI Bill Murray’s face so he didn’t look like he was mentally in his car en route to cash his paycheck?

Frozen Empire wasn’t a perfect movie, but it at least found a way to make the old Ghostbusters an actual functional component of the story (and even took them to task for flaunting EPA regulations to some extent). 

And even if Aykroyd and Murray are too tired and haggard to star in any more tentpole blockbusters, don’t write out Ernie Hudson on their account. He’s still firing on all cylinders and looks better at 78 than most of us will ever look at 38.

Not to mention, wholly abandoning the original cast in the name of moving beyond nostalgia won’t necessarily work with Ghostbusters because it’s so deeply entwined with nostalgia at this point. Even if you lose Aykroyd, Murray and Hudson, fans will still expect, nay demand, the return of a certain children's juice box from the ‘80s.