An open let­ter to Jason Reitman

Dear Jason,

Con­grats on the new gig! I’ll admit I didn’t see it com­ing – not least because I hoped, how­ev­er naive­ly, we were putting the Ghost­busters fran­chise out to pas­ture, at least for a lit­tle while. More fool me; I should real­ly know bet­ter by now. My sur­prise was com­pound­ed, though, by your own past ret­i­cence to become your father. But I get it – peo­ple change. Needs must. (By the way, how was the hir­ing process?)

Peo­ple will moan that Hol­ly­wood has run out of ideas, but that’s sim­ply not true. I fond­ly remem­ber the fierce inno­va­tion that came with Paul Feig’s 2016 Ghost­busters. They were ghost­busters, but they were also women. A lot of men were very upset about the sug­ges­tion that women (in par­tic­u­lar, a black woman) could bust ghosts, shroud­ing it in neg­a­tiv­i­ty. The film felt doomed from the start.

Maybe it nev­er stood a chance of com­pet­ing with a titan of ​’80s cin­e­ma. Besides, some­times inno­va­tion can end up feel­ing more like tokenism. I’m not sur­prised you’ve dis­tanced your­self from Paul’s cor­ner of the GBEU. So what’s your spin? Teenage Ghost­busters? Per­haps not com­ing from you, if Juno and Men, Women & Chil­dren were any­thing to go by.

You’ve spo­ken a lot about how much you love the orig­i­nal films – how you were the first Ghost­busters fan, watch­ing stage-side while your dad direct­ed Bill, Dan, Harold and Ernie. I’m remind­ed of Kyle New­man, avid Star Wars fan turned direc­tor, who now spends his time telling every­one that Dis­ney paid off crit­ics to give The Last Jedi good reviews. It con­cerns me when die-hard fans become film­mak­ers – but that isn’t the case with you, is it? You’re not just a fan of Ghost­busters. You’re family.

The thing is, Jason, I’m just… tired. Tired of fran­chis­es being jolt­ed back into life after a few years on the shelf. Tired of gim­micks. Tired of Hol­ly­wood nepo­tism. Tired of reboots, ret­cons and revamps. Gen­uine inno­va­tion in block­busters seems increas­ing­ly the pre­serve of ani­ma­tion stu­dios – just look at Spi­der-Man: Into the Spi­der-Verse. I see there’s an ani­mat­ed Ghost­busters film in the works too, due some­time after your film. I hope you’ll under­stand why that seems like the more excit­ing propo­si­tion right now – doesn’t it seem like a nat­ur­al fit for the wacky, ghoul-filled world of Venkman, Spen­gler and Stantz?

I ques­tion the need for anoth­er live-action Ghost­busters film as much as I ques­tioned the gen­der pol­i­tics in your recent film, The Front Run­ner. But maybe there is some com­mon­al­i­ty there: the urge to right a per­ceived wrong, the over­whelm­ing sense of nos­tal­gia for a ​“bet­ter time” in Amer­i­can cul­ture. When politi­cians were noble, when movies were movies.

Good luck, Jason. The world’s watch­ing. If every­thing goes to plan, who knows what might come next. Maybe Sofia Cop­po­la will final­ly bring us The God­fa­ther Part IV.

Yours with trepidation,

HW