Forgive me if this has ever been posted before, but I found it while looking through a box of magazines and thought some of you might find it enlightening, so I transcribed it:

Spectral Sequel

Murray promises that the wait for his next movie won't be nearly as long as the one for Scrooged. "It's not going to be called Ghostbusters II“, he reveals. ”We'll burn in Hell before we call it Ghostbusters II. I've suggested The Last of the Ghostbusters, to make sure there won't be anything like a Ghostbusters III. But the script is nowhere near ready, and we start shooting soon. Jeez, more pressure. We'll figure it out…or we won't.

“I was the last holdout. They finally just waved too much money in my face,” laughs Murray. "I really didn't want to do it for all the obvious reasons, but the reasons to do it were obvious, too. With Dan and Harold and Moranis and Sigourney, we really had a ball. That's really the most fun I've had on a movie. It's the most fun group to be with.

“We weren't so crazy about making money, or being desperate, and it worked,” he confesses. "Finally, Dan and Harold said, ‘We’ve got some ideas here. What do you think?' We spent a couple of days talking, and they did have some amazing ideas for this story."

Shortly before presstime, even Murray couldn't confirm Sigourney Weaver's participation in the sequel. In the years since the original Ghostbusters, Weaver (STARLOG #109) has established herself as a major Hollywood force. Based on her Academy Award-nominated performance as Ripley in ALIENS and the financial triumph of James Cameron's film, producers consider the actress “bankable”, meaning she wields enough clout to see as controversial and uncommercial a movie as Gorillas in the Mist brought to the screen as a vehicle for her. Though Murray jokingly refers to Gorillas as “The Monkey Movie,” Weaver's star has risen to the point where accepting a minor role in a Ghostbusters adventure could represent a poor career move.

"She's not even in the cartoon, so I don't know if she's going to be in the film,“ Murray says. ”The original idea was that she would be in it. The ideas they sold me on to say, ‘OK, let’s do it,' are no longer in the script. Sigourney was one of those ideas.

"They've gone all the way around trying to figure out how to make it. I had to audition with some actresses, but we all like Sigourney. The only problem with Sigourney is that she's so tall. Naaah, I'm just kidding. She's tall, but she's not too tall. The problem is that you would wind up with a story that was tilted like the Flintstone family. Sigourney and I wouldn't be this major thing and it would be hard to figure out how the Ghostbusters' dynamic would grow. The sort of story they were writing ended up not really needing the other three guys."

Fortunately, though, matters have been settled. Reached at presstime, Weaver confirms she will be in The Last of the Ghostbusters as “the female lead, as far as I know.”

Murray looks forward to the filming–sort of. “Oh, what the Hell,” he sighs. “Even if its a dog, this sequel's going to make money because so many people are going to say, ‘Let’s see if they ruined it' or ‘Let’s see if it's any good.' It's a creative process and that's all that counts. We've got a few weeks yet,” Bill Murray notes. “It should be interesting.”

I knew he only did the movie because they threw bags of money at him, but yikes was he bitter. A bit of a look into the script problems that went on all the way up until shooting, too.

Small wonder it took him 20 years to permit the closest thing we'll ever have to a Ghostbusters III.

this was Murray's first and only sequel (omitting the Garfield films), ofcourse he was shaky about it. Take into account, Murray's signature sarcasm as well. Almost everything he said in that article was purely tongue in cheek.

nice find by the way. very nostalgic.

hmmmmm, i dont think he'll do ghostbusters 3 myself, i dont no why i just have a feeling he'll turn it down

RickyM;135412
hmmmmm, i dont think he'll do ghostbusters 3 myself, i dont no why i just have a feeling he'll turn it down

If he did the video game, and given the interview where you can actually see him say the words “if its a good script I'm in” and that “doing the voice for the video game has rejuvenated him on the franchise” and that “the wounds from Ghostbusters II have healed” and given his willingness to finally sign off on his likeness on a figure after all these years, I really don't see how anyone can think he'll be the one standing in the way anymore, unless the script is horrible. In which case, good for him.

I'm sure that there won't be another “Ghostbusters II” situation. Bill hated it for the same reasons a lot of other fans did, and Bill won't be fooled again. Either the script they start shooting with will be the one he approves of, or he won't do it.

So I think it's safe to say that if GB3 gets made, it, at least, won't recycle the story points like GB2 did.

Judging by what it takes to make Murray happy, we'll probably get something with more comedy, more human interaction or maybe even something more dramatic that makes the characters grow. He's always been more interested in character development than spectacles. Naturally, he'd concede to some spectacle because it is a GB flick, but the film would be less spectacle-driven that GB2 was.

I just got thinking about something….I wonder the reason why Bill agreed to doing the 3rd film is because someone else is writing it. Maybe he didnt like some of things that where going on and maybe his deal was if someone else writes it than hes in…..just a thought…

“The ideas they sold me on to say, ‘OK, let’s do it,' are no longer in the script. Sigourney was one of those ideas.”

I've been wondering for YEARS what ideas they were initially kicking around. Michael C. Gross mentioned something similar about major changes to the plot in the Rolling Stone article.

Here's hoping the Blu-ray GB2 will shed some light on this…

D. OSBORN;135464
I've been wondering for YEARS what ideas they were initially kicking around. Michael C. Gross mentioned something similar about major changes to the plot in the Rolling Stone article.

I just read from this idea:

Cinefex
For the sequel, Aykroyd once again wrote the initial script–a story in which Dana was kidnapped and taken to Scotland where she discovered a fairy ring and civilization underground. “My first draft was really too far out,” Aykroyd reflected. "It was probably too inaccessible, though at the time I wrote it that it was the direction we should go in. I wanted to leave New York City behind because I thought we had done that. But New York is really the greatest arena for our kind of ghost story, and staying in the city gave continuity to the second film. One idea that did stay in our script was the notion of having things occur underground. We went skyward in the first film–up to the top of a skyscraper–so I thought for the second one it would be nice to see the underbelly of the city. But my original concept for going underground was different. It involved a pneumatic tube two thousand miles long that they traveled in for three days. It was like a primitive mail chute."

I really don't blame Murray for his take on sequels. Most of the time, the sequels are always worse. Some worse then others. There have only been a few rare cases where the sequel was probably far better than the first movie (Anyone thinking The Dark Knight?)

Murray saw something special in Ghostbusters and didn't want it ruined. He is good friends after all with Dan, Harold, and the rest.

Yeah he doesn't like to do sequels, but I feel he took Ghostbusters seriously and saw it as something special. He liked the character of Peter Venkman and he enjoy doing the video game so I think he just didn't want to ruin it

BTW, I bet he was the one that complained the most about the packs being heavy. Harold was the least.

Reading Aykroyd's original ideas from that Cinefax interview, I'm rather glad we got the GBII we did, evenif it was just okay and not great.

I suppose those were the ideas Murray was sold on and wound up being altered?