Some took issue with the fact that the film disregarded the continuity of the original film, something Ghostbusters: Afterlife decided to go full in on. The 2016 Ghostbusters films live as an interesting artifact for both film and in the larger Ghostbusters franchise. Releasing during an election year, and not just any election year but one between the possibility of the first female president and someone who used misogyny as a tool of his campaign, put what was just another studio comedy into a culture war item for various individuals. The cast was announced in 2015 and many were hating the movie before they saw even one second of footage, with Trump complaining about women being Ghostbusters as a way to benefit his future presidential campaign. The movie was announced to be in development in August 2014, the same month the online harassment campaign Gamergate started taking place, where most if not all the harassment was targeting women.
Suddenly it became political, and it escalated out of control."įeig is certainly right in the timing of Ghostbusters release. The bummer is that all we did was try to make a movie to make people laugh. It just took me back to grade school and bullies. It was hard to absorb - and quite an assault for me because I’d always had such a lovely relationship with the internet. Had it been a few years earlier or later, I don’t know if it would’ve hit like that. It was a tense time in our nation’s history, and I think we got caught in the middle of that. "That a lot of people have a lot of passionate opinions and the internet allows them to directly express those opinions to you. Feig did say a lot of online discussions hit him hard as he had a good relationship with the internet before but compared the experience to being bullied in school. He believes had the film been released earlier or even later it may not have had such feverous discourse, but the film's release coincided with a very tense time in America's history as it opened just five months before the 2016 President Election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. In an interview with THR, Ghostbusters director Paul Feig discussed the controversy surrounding the film. Related: How Ghostbusters: Afterlife Reviews & Box Office Compare To The 2016 Reboot Plans for a sequel were scrapped and Sony instead opted for a legacy sequel approach with Ghostbusters: Afterlife which was released in 2021. While the film did gross $229.1 million worldwide it was seen as a box office disappointment as the film carried a budget of $144 million and with marketing cost, would have had to gross $300 million to be a hit. The movie premiered on July 15, 2016, with a $46 million dollar opening weekend. The film's trailer quickly became the most disliked movie trailer in YouTube history and the film's marketing buildup carried with it a wave of online harassment. The movie was one of many in a string of reboots Hollywood became obsessed with in the wake of Batman Begins, yet unlike the reboot of Robocop or Karate Kid, which were also both revivals of beloved '80s films, the discussion around Ghostbusters was much nastier.
Released in 2016, Ghostbusters, later titled Ghostbusters: Answer the Call on home video, rebooted the iconic film franchise with a female cast in the lead roles with Kirsten Wiig, Mellisa McCarthy, Leslie Jones, and Kate McKinnon. Ghostbusters director Paul Feig reflects on the movie's controversy six years later.