The new Ghost­busters movie is a false dawn for women in Hollywood

Ear­li­er this week, direc­tor Paul Feig announced that he and screen­writer Katie Dip­pold are devel­op­ing a new Ghost­busters movie. A third film has been moot­ed since the ear­ly ​’90s, but it’s now been con­firmed that nei­ther Ivan Reit­man, the direc­tor of the cult 1984 com­e­dy, nor its writer-star Dan Aykroyd, will be repris­ing their roles. Instead, Feig will replace the orig­i­nal leads with a female cast. With no fur­ther details con­cern­ing the cast or sto­ry­line revealed at this stage (you just know Sigour­ney Weaver’s been sit­ting by the phone ever since Feig broke the sto­ry via his Twit­ter account), the ques­tion on every fan’s lips is: who they gonna call?

Here’s anoth­er, more con­tentious ques­tion: is this Ghost­busters reboot a good thing for women in Hollywood?

While it’s cer­tain­ly refresh­ing to see a female-led stu­dio com­e­dy in the works – which, based on Feig and Dippold’s pre­vi­ous col­lab­o­ra­tion, the Melis­sa McCarthy/​Sandra Bul­lock cop com­e­dy The Heat, promis­es to be a blast – it would be pre­ma­ture to declare this as a vic­to­ry for gen­der equal­i­ty in the film indus­try. Because like it or not, the real­i­ty is that no stu­dio oper­at­ing with­in Hollywood’s risk-averse sys­tem would be will­ing to fund a project with a pre­dom­i­nant­ly female cast if it didn’t come with a neat­ly prepack­aged glob­al fan­base. In fact, any sus­tained inter­est and sub­se­quent finan­cial gain gen­er­at­ed by this new-look Ghost­busters will more than like­ly serve to rein­force Hollywood’s out­mod­ed atti­tude towards women-front­ed projects – that suc­cess­ful films fea­tur­ing mul­ti­ple female leads are con­tin­gent on slot­ting actress­es into roles pre­vi­ous­ly cul­ti­vat­ed and inhab­it­ed by men.

In an inter­view with Enter­tain­ment Week­ly, Feig revealed that Ghost­busters will defin­i­tive­ly be a reboot, not a sequel: ​“I love ori­gin sto­ries. That’s my favourite thing. 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.” This makes per­fect sense, and it’s pos­i­tive news in so far as Feig and Dip­pold will pre­sum­ably be com­ing up with new char­ac­ters, as opposed to giv­ing the Bill Mur­ray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hud­son char­ac­ters we all know and love a female makeover. But it’s not the same as cre­at­ing entire­ly orig­i­nal female heroes, and that’s a key distinction.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, Ghost­busters is a men’s‑only club, but it’s impor­tant to note that this is, and always has been, a gen­der neu­tral fran­chise. That is to say, not a fran­chise that can read­i­ly be defined in terms of its mas­culin­i­ty. This makes Ghost­busters ripe for a female reboot – the roles of the ​‘busters shouldn’t be open exclu­sive­ly to male actors because there is lit­er­al­ly no rea­son why women can’t be Ghost­busters. Indeed, the deci­sion to cast Ghost­busters with female leads is a tan­ta­lis­ing prospect, not least because right now there are so many excep­tion­al female come­di­ans work­ing in Hol­ly­wood – Melis­sa McCarthy, Kris­ten Wiig, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph are just some of the names that have been rumoured so far; all would be excel­lent choic­es. And hey, cross­ing streams won’t be a prob­lem for this new gang of para­psy­chol­o­gists. So what’s the problem?

Let’s be clear, there’s noth­ing gim­micky about the notion of a female Ghost­busters. But there is some­thing inher­ent­ly tokenis­tic about putting a female spin on an icon­ic fran­chise. Espe­cial­ly when you con­sid­er how few oppor­tu­ni­ties there are for women in orig­i­nal action-come­dies. Brides­maids, Feig’s hys­ter­i­cal direc­to­r­i­al break­through from 2011, gar­nered huge amounts of crit­i­cal and pub­lic sup­port, backed up by a healthy box office return (although it still took con­sid­er­ably less at the US box office than The Hang­over II). And yet action-come­dies fea­tur­ing female ensem­ble casts are few and far between. Back in Octo­ber 2012, Mil­len­ni­um Films out­lined plans for an all-female instal­ment in Sylvester Stallone’s Expend­ables fran­chise. If this announce­ment appeared to sig­nal a sea-change, the title – Expend­aBelles – screamed nov­el­ty spin-off. In terms of progress, then, is Ghost­busters 3 anoth­er case of two steps for­ward, one step back?

There is a wider issue here. Put sim­ply, there are not enough orig­i­nal fran­chis­es – films not adapt­ed from a best-sell­ing nov­el or com­ic book series – being made. Take this year’s sum­mer block­buster crop. Of the 10 high­est-gross­ing sum­mer movies of 2014 (based on world­wide gross), six were sequels, three adap­ta­tions and one a reboot. Only three of those movies passed the Bechdel test (22 Jump Street, Malef­i­cent and Trans­form­ers: Age of Extinc­tion), and only Malef­i­cent fea­tured two women in a lead role. Regard­less of whether you’re look­ing at orig­i­nal fran­chis­es, sequels or reboots, the fact remains that women are more like­ly to be found play­ing stock char­ac­ters (Scar­lett Johansson’s leather-clad femme fatale in Cap­tain Amer­i­ca: The Win­ter Sol­dier, Emma Stone’s pas­sive girl-next-door in The Amaz­ing Spi­der-Man 2) than authen­ti­cal­ly pro­gres­sive pro­tag­o­nists. Sad­ly, Hollywood’s idea of a top-line female ensem­ble in 2014 looks like this.

On a cul­tur­al lev­el, the cast­ing of mul­ti­ple female leads in both Ghost­busters 3 and Expend­aBelles is sig­nif­i­cant, as it gives both fran­chis­es a dif­fer­ent nar­ra­tive per­spec­tive. But these films won’t nec­es­sar­i­ly cre­ate more roles for women, at least not with­in the rigid­ly male-dom­i­nat­ed fran­chise for­mat. There’s every chance we’ll see a female Dad’s Army before an orig­i­nal female-led tent­pole movie finds its way onto a studio’s slate. A look ahead to what’s com­ing our way next sum­mer and the pic­ture becomes even more depress­ing – Pitch Per­fect 2 is the only main­stream com­e­dy fea­tur­ing a female ensem­ble cur­rent­ly sched­uled for release.

Ghost­busters may yet prove to be a step in the right direc­tion, but if the long-term goal is ulti­mate­ly equal oppor­tu­ni­ties for women across the film indus­try, it’s unlike­ly that this breed of reboot will be the cat­a­lyst for the kind of top-down mind­set shift that’s required.

**Update – 3 March, 2016**

The first offi­cial trail­er has just been released. Watch it below and let us know what you think @LWLies