Ghostbusters 3 Release Date Delayed After Harold Ramis’ Death

The Ghostbusters 3 release date has been delayed after the death of Harold Ramis, who played Egon Spengler in the 1984 original. Director Ivan Reitman has also decided to give up the project although it’s stated that they still hope to begin filming in early 2015, if at all.

In a related report by The Inquisitr, back in 2012 a very hopeful Dan Aykroyd was not only talking Ghostbusters 3, he was also discussing plans for Ghostbusters 4 and beyond.

The last draft for Ghostbusters 3 had Dan Aykroyd and planned co-star Harold Ramis handing over the ghost trap to the next generation of Ghostbusters. The other production speed bump has Bill Murray refusing to participate, meaning that the character Peter Venkman will likely not be in the script. Aykroyd also claims that he had trouble getting hold of Murray at all, so now the plans is to have the original cast members play a very limited role.

Reitman says they’ve been holding back on commenting about what’s been happening with the Ghostbusters 3 production. While he’s not going to be directly involved he’ll still help with the process:

“When I came back from Harold’s funeral, it was really moving and it made me think about a lot of things,” Reitman said. “I said I’d been thinking about it for weeks, that I’d rather just produce this Ghostbusters. I told them I thought I could help but let’s find a really good director and make it with him. So that’s what we’ve agreed will happen. I didn’t want all kinds of speculation about what happened with me, that is the real story.”

Otherwise, we do know that Emma Stone turned down a role in Ghostbusters 3 and it’s rumored Rick Moranis may make a comeback for the movie. Dan Akroyd also let it slip that the Ghostbusters 3 plot will be based upon newer physics research:

“It’s based on new research that’s being done in particle physics by the young men and women at Columbia University. Basically, there’s research being done that I can say that the world or the dimension that we live in, our four planes of existence, length, height, width and time, become threatened by some of the research that’s being done. Ghostbusters — new Ghostbusters — have to come and solve the problem.”

Do you think Ghostbusters 3 will ever hit movie theaters? Should they even bother now that most of the original cast won’t be in it?