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When the secret project of Jason Reitman's Ghostbusters was unveiled to the world, we should all have been ridiculously excited. The director is extremely talented and more importantly, he is the son of the man who created the original film. In the context of things like Halloween and the restart of Terminator to more accurately reflect the spirit of the originals (while ignoring the bad consequences), this should have been presented as a smart idea.
But because of the toxic culture inspired by the Ghostbusters remake of 2016 – especially the unpleasant way it was received online long before anyone else saw it – this conversation turned into something else.
Despite public reactions to this reboot (its audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB are not abnormal – they are responsive and reflective), there are now supporters of the film who announce the decision to ignore restart and continue the initial schedule. is unforgivable. An open letter was written, which is always a sign that People Are Mad.
And then, Leslie Jones – the star of SNL and one of the four actors who replaced "the originals" in Paul Feig's remake – responded on Twitter to say that she was disgusted with the decision to remove the remake. No matter whether Jason Reitman complied with the announced remake in the movie's announcement or acknowledged that he would not oppose a longer exposure of this timeline, he is now as mean in this conversation that Sony does it for canning. a planned universe & # 39; Busters with an all-female cast.
But let's be honest here. The mere fact that an actress advocates for her reboot to be ignored does not force a studio to pay attention. What they pay attention to – as if to know – is money. What interests them, it's the audience, not the critics (that's why the critical score of Ghostbusters 2016 on Rotten Tomatoes does not matter).
One can write as many open letters as possible to fill a virtual mailbag about this issue, but that will not change the fact that keeping this timeline is just not welcome for the majority of fans . And in terms of blockbuster, the biggest crowd screams the loudest, which tends to thwart political movements launched on social media.
In this type of environment, a narrative can magnify outrage and become a dangerous mouthpiece that leads people to lose their job as an Oscar or movie host to losing scenes, or removing actors from roles that they did not know how to whitewash. in the case of the next Hellboy). But it's a lost battle for anyone who wants to sell the second chance of Ghostbusters 2016's life because it's impossible to convince a studio to change their minds about something that pays nothing back.
Do you remember that sequel to Dredd? Hellboy 3 by Guillermo Del Toro? Alien of Neill Blomkamp? They were great, was not it? The studios wanted to create suites that the studios wanted to create in spite of the fact that their predecessors were not making enough money and that they made no sense in commercial terms based on projections and facts and not that social media was saying : "Oh, I want this movie to happen." No, they did not, because they did not happen.
If you build it, they will come. Likewise, if you do not buy the tickets, they will not build it.
What counts for Sony on the Ghostbusters front is not the nostalgia for Reitman to make. It's not that they can cope with the nostalgic bad to the minute close to all cultures (Stranger Things, Sabrina, It, Halloween, Candyman, Child's Play … this n & # 39; Is not a surprise, fans are missing out on new things). It's not that they could get the original cast to do what they'd refused to do for three decades and most of the time get together. It's not that they have the right story to keep this schedule going. These are all factors, but NONE of them would matter if Ghostbusters 2016 had made money.
Even when designing the idea of doing this reboot, the studio was doing what it thought was the right commercial move. They could not do Ghostbusters 3, because that was just not an option and they thought that bringing in an all-female team would be a marketable advantage. They did not make a political decision, they made it a business deal, and then, when the film had only $ 229.1 million out of an initial budget of $ 144 million, they made another business decision. The franchise in question was dead in the water.
Sony took a bath on this movie. It does not matter that critics are for the most part favorable, that it is a progressive idea to have an entirely female cast or that Leslie Jones thinks that a sequel should be produce. The marketing costs required a $ 300 million return at the box office and, as Paul Feig himself said, movies like this should be worth $ 500 million. What he did not say explicitly was that it was NECESSARY to allow Sony to consider it a success, even remotely, and to continue its plans for follow-up.
In the end, the losses on the film were expected to be between $ 25 and $ 75 million and the film 's performance actively contributed to Sony taking a $ 1 billion dollar write – down in January 2017. is not a speculation, it's a fact reported by Sony. Why the hell would they persist with a franchise that did it?
Moreover, including the all-female reboot as an extension of Ghostbusters' original script makes no sense. Let's be clear, the decision to restart in the first place has erased the originals (therefore, it is marketed as a reboot and the original distribution appears for frankly ugly cameos). At this point, there was no consideration to worry about the originals or the anger of anyone to put an end to this continuity. This is how reboots work and their choice of not making a sequel made it impossible for them to be included in Reitman's project, no matter how many positive lessons the filmmaker could take from that film in his own.
What matters for Sony, is that Ghostbusters 2 did what Ghostbusters 2016 could not do. It may have a much worse critical score on rotten tomatoes, but it has earned $ 215.3 million on a $ 37 million budget, initially beating the record for the biggest opening weekend. three days of history (until Batman arrives a few weeks later and beats him again). This is the eighth most profitable film of 1989 and that's what counts.
They might have also looked at the Ghostbusters video game, released in 2009, to reflect the financial viability of continuing the timeline, as they had done at the time. What they would have found was a "real sequel" – at least according to fan perception – released in June 2009 and reporting a million copies sold in North America at the end of the year. July of the same year. It's a figure that would have sparked smiles.
When Sony was considering retaining a brand, he knew that KNEW was financially viable, because Ghostbusters was financially viable, they only studied two things. they examined the financial performance of a film that had contributed to a reduction in the value of one billion dollars and another who had broken records. No matter that they are separated by 30, the studios run in absolute black and white. One was a yes, the other was a no and no matter how many open letters, how many tweets sent by Leslie Jones, how horrible it was that a well-intentioned progressive film had failed … It's not personal, it's business.
Watch then …
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