Back in 2015, Iron Man 3 and Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation scribe Drew Pearce revealed that he was working on a Ghostbusters movie. Speaking to MTV, Pearce said “I’ve finished my work on that in the last couple weeks. Obviously it’s top secret, but there’s a gigantic bold idea that I came up with, and the Russo brothers — who did Captain America: The Winter Soldier and are doing Civil War at the moment — and Ivan Reitman, who did the original movie, are going to take that and run with it.”
Pearce even discussed his dream cast, which would feature Chris Pratt and Channing Tatum. And then it all went quiet on the Ghostbusters front. The project seemingly dead. So when FANDOM spoke to Pearce about his new movie Hotel Artemis— which hits UK screens July 20 — we asked what went wrong …
False Competition and a Peculiar Announcement
Drew Pearce: “It just never happened. It was with the Russos who I love… it was an idea I had and it was pretty out there actually and so the whole way through the development process I was like ‘Are they going to stop us? Are they going to stop us?’ And they never did.
“Then there was this false competition between an idea of a male Ghostbusters and a female Ghostbusters. That was really unpleasant and I didn’t like. And there was some weirdness around it as well. Ivan Reitman did an announcement that I was writing Ghostbusters. Then put out an announcement that I wasn’t and that there were no other Ghostbusters. So the whole experience was a bit peculiar.
“I would have loved to go play in that universe, and I know the Russos feel the same. But I’ve discovered over the last eight years that it’s a lot easier for a film to not get made than for it to get made, and unfortunately my Ghostbusters is one of those that fell by the wayside. It’s sad. It would have been a lot of fun. It would have been pretty cosmic as an idea.”
Hotel Artemis hits UK screens July 20, while you can check out our interview with the film’s cast below.