Bill Murray's script approval still needed before filming can begin...

In what has become one of the most famous stories of 'development hell' in recent Hollywood memory, the production of Ghostbusters 3 continues to inch tantalizingly closer to fruition, and co-writer Lee Eisenberg recently revealed just how close the film is to finally getting off the ground. To the surprise of absolutely no one who has followed the saga of this 'Don Quixote' of action-comedies, famously-eccentric Bill Murray appears to still be the only missing link in the cast and crew chain.

Participating in a series of lectures at Connecticut College, Eisenberg was inevitably quizzed on the status of the hotly-anticipated project and gave the audience an update of sorts on developing the script --

"We've been working really closely with Ivan Reitman for a couple of years on it. Dan Aykroyd has been really involved. Harold Ramis has been very involved - we're sharing a story credit on it with him. Then we reworked the script. I mean, that script went through a lot of rewrites, and it kept getting, we think at least, tighter and funnier... It's really scary when you're writing characters you grew up on... The last thing you want to do is disappoint."

Eisenberg went on to say that the script that he and co-writer Gene Stupnitsky have penned is all but finalized and waiting for approval, not by Sony Pictures (who have already tentatively green-lit the production), but by star Bill Murray. The coup de grace is not that Murray hasn't approved it, but that...well, let Eisenberg tell you --

"Right now, we have a script we haven't worked on probably in a couple of months, and we're waiting for Bill Murray to read it (italics mine). People seem excited about it, and the studio seems high on it... We worked really hard on it, and I think it'd be a really fun movie."

Yes folks, the script is all but finished, Sony is already limbering up their thumbs for the official 'thumbs up', the rest of the Ghostbusters are getting measured for their proton pack fittings, but Bill Murray has yet to read the script! And this news doesn't come from just Lee Eisenberg. At a screening of the original Ghostbusters at Arclight Cinema in Los Angeles, producer Joe Medjuck was also asked about the status of the hoped-for three-quel and his answer was much the same --

"Sony says they'd like to make it, everyone thinks it's a good script. Bill has heard it's a good script, but he hasn't read it. Bill's like that - he just says he's busy. He hasn't even read 10 pages yet, to the best of our knowledge."

As ScreenRant points out, Murray's involvement in Ghostbusters 3 is not just essential to a successful return to the franchise, it's essential to get the film made at all. Murray is one of the five rights holders of the Ghostbusters trademark and if he does not sign off on the proposed screenplay, not only will there be no return of Peter Venkman, it will most likely be the production's death knell.

Assuming an eventual green light from Murray, production on Ghostbusters 3 is slated to begin sometime this Spring.

ScreenRant See also:

10 things that Ghostbusters 3 would need to get right

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