Ramis talks Ghostbusters 3 and Meatballs


Harold Ramis recently spoke to Moviehole about Ghostbusters 3 and a Meatballs remake.

Moviehole caught up with the always amiable Harold Ramis a few days back to chat about his new comedy "Year One". Naturally, we touched on the highly-anticipated "Ghostbusters 3", which Ramis, Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray are expected to shoot later this year. First of all though, there's a certain "Meatballs" remake on the way (announced this morning)...

Question: Now, there - there is supposed to be this remake happening of Meatballs.

Ramis: I've heard that. I have no information about that. It turned up on IMDB one day on my profile, and I've never said a word, or heard a word about it.

Question: I mean, my question would be, "Why," of course. Because I don't understand why -

Ramis: There've been three sequels to Meatballs I had nothing to do with. I've never - my whole involvement in Meatballs probably lasted a month.

Question: What about the much-written about, talked about, and ballyhooed Ghostbusters sequel?

Ramis: Yeah. Well, Dan Aykroyd - you know, kind of kept it alive all these years. And - it finally got to a point where everyone has said they would do it, if there's a great script and the studio proceeded to - you know, engaged us to get that process going. And we kind of hammered out a story with the two young writers who worked on t finally got to a point where everyone has said they would do it, if there's a great script and the studio proceeded to - you know, engaged us to get that process going. And we kind of hammered out a story with the two young writers who worked on Year One with me, Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky. They're writer-producers on The Office. And they're gonna finish a first draft eventually, and we'll see where we are. No one's committed anything. You know, there's no casting, there's no director. There's just - just the desire to look at a script.

Question: I guess Bill was one of the biggest holdouts on moving this forward. What do you think changed his mind?

Ramis: I don't know that he was really holding out on anything, because there had been no concerted effort to do this, really. There'd been talk about it at one point, and it didn't look like it was possible to make a financial deal. And that was all business. But at the time, there was no real idea, and no real creative will to do it.

Question: The first one was pretty much ahead of its time. You couldn't make that first one now the same way, for the kind of mon-I mean, today, that would be extraordinarily expensive, wouldn't it?

Ramis: Yeah. It wasn't super-expensive, in its time. I don't know what the economics would be of doing those effects now. The second movie was - the first movie, all the effects are optical. The second movie, they were all digital. There'd been a complete revolution in the business in between - in the four years between the films. But I don't know - I never - you know, I couldn't even tell you what either of them cost, budget-wise.

Question: What do you hope to do next, assuming that you'll do something before Ghostbusters 3?

Ramis: I'm just relaxing. You know, we read scripts that people send us. You know, I have one pretty worthy spec script that I wrote. That I could turn into a movie - I'm not sure it's right for that. You know, I wait for some vital interests to awaken in me, whether it's passion for an idea, or just - I really have to want to do something badly to get going these days. Maybe it's always been true. I really - you know, I've never worked just to work.
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