Bill Murray Once Refused to Return to the ‘Ghostbusters’ Franchise Unless He Was Killed Off
Actor Bill Murray helped launch the iconic Ghostbusters franchise. But after doing the first two movies, he confided that he’d only return for another Ghostbusters film under one condition.
Bill Murray wanted out of the ‘Ghostbusters’ franchise
It took a while for the beloved Ghostbusters franchise to get a sequel to the second movie. It wasn’t until 2016’s Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters: Afterlife that the series finally managed to continue in some form.
But before those two movies, a third Ghostbusters film had been in the works for decades. When a sequel was pitched much earlier, there was hope that Murray would reprise his role. The film’s director, Ivan Reitman, once came up with a film that would focus on Murray and Sigourney Weaver’s fictional child in the movie.
“Bill and Sigourney’s kid, Oscar, is a postgrad student, and weird things start to happen. Bill Murray dies in the first scene, because he always said, ‘I won’t do it unless I die.’ And I said, ‘Okay, you got it.’ It was a father-son story, with him as a ghost. By the way, the studio green-lit it. Everything was ready to go. I couldn’t get his attention, and in the midst of that, Harold got really sick. And that was pretty much it,” Reitman once told Vulture.
Bill Murray felt doing a ‘Ghostbusters’ 3 would’ve been like going back to high school
Murray had a few understandable reasons why he wasn’t too excited about another Ghostbusters movie. Ghostbusters II wasn’t as commercially successful as its predecessor. And other than that, Murray noticed that history wasn’t too kind for the third movies in other film franchises.
“We made the first Ghostbusters – it was one of the great movies, one of the great entertainments of all time,” Murray once told Dazed Digital. “Then we made a second one; it was okay, right? So what are we going to do? Are we going to rush to make a third one? It would be great if you could make one that was as good as the first one. It would probably be good if you could make one that was as good as the second one. But, you know, there was The Godfather. Then there was The Godfather II. And then there was The Godfather III. So if you want Godfather III…”
And even though some of Murray’s friends expressed some interest in the film, that wasn’t enough incentive for the Garfield star to revisit the franchise.
“They want to refresh the franchise. The franchise is fantastic,” Murray said. “But I find that you don’t really lose by saying no in show business. If you say no, sometimes they come back with a better script. Or sometimes it just goes away. But I don’t know. Are you thinking of going back to high school?”
Why Bill Murray found ‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’ physically painful
Although Ghostbusters: Afterlife was the fourth film in the franchise, it served as more of a sequel than 2016’s Ghostbusters. It featured the return of many Ghostbusters originals, including Dan Aykroyd and Murray. Afterlife must’ve had everything Murray wanted in a Ghostbusters script, as he couldn’t help sing the film’s praises. It helped that the movie would be directed by Ivan Reitman’s son, Jason Reitman.
“It really has the feel of the first one, more than the second one or the girls’ one. It has a different feel than two out of four” Murray once said according to NME about Afterlife.
As eager as he was to work with the original director’s son, however, Murray admitted that the feature could be physically taxing.
“I think he’s really got something,” Murray continued. “It was hard. It was really hard. That’s why I think it’s gonna be good. We were just in it for a little while, but it was physically painful. Wearing those packs is extremely uncomfortable. We had batteries the size of batteries. They now have batteries the size of earrings. It’s still a really heavy thing to wear, all the time.”
