the Ghostbusters 3s that never were

The road to Ghostbusters: Afterlife is littered with decades of unmade Ghostbusters 3 treatments. What happened?

For decades, it didn’t seem like anyone. Following the blockbuster success of 1984’s Ghostbusters and its less well-received yet still financially winning 1989 follow-up, Ghostbusters II, a third film in the franchise should’ve been inevitable. So why didn’t happen for more than 30 years?

While offshoots like the Ghostbusters video games, comic books and especially the animated series The Real Ghostbusters (1986-1991) kept the brand alive, and even thriving to some extent over the years, it was 27 years before a new theatrical film–Paul Feig’s much-maligned all-female reboot in 2016–arrived in theaters. And it was a further five years before Ghostbusters: Afterlife, billed as the first direct sequel to the original pair of films on a big screen, found its way to theaters.

Yet all during that time, multiple attempts at a third official Ghostbusters movie–many of them spearheaded by self-styled keeper of the flame Dan Aykroyd–were scripted and in development at one point or another. Many of them were shot down due to budgetary concerns, the questionable involvement of star Bill Murray, or a combination of both (no Bill = no budget).

Here’s a timeline of the ghosts of Ghostbusters 3s past, the abandoned follow-ups that now haunt the winding, endless corridors of that dreaded place known as development hell https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/ghostbusters-sequels-you-never-saw/?