Yes, Sony executives had no doubt that there would be a sequel to the Ghostbusters reboot during the film’s opening weekend.
“While nothing has been officially announced yet, there’s no doubt in my mind it will happen,” said Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution at Sony (via The Hollywood Reporter).
The film has been favorable by critics, but many fans have been clamoring against the all-female Ghostbusters movie. Now that the movie has been out for about a month, the film has grossed $119 million domestically. With international box office sales, the worldwide gross is $182 million as of August 12th. The movie still has to open in France, Japan and Mexico, but analysts are predicting that the film will have a tough climb to reach at least $225 million. That’s definitely a bad sign since the film’s budget is $144 million, and let’s not forget about the big marketing budget. It’s been reported that for the film to break even, it would need to gross at least $300 million. It’s predicted that the film will have a loss of over $70 million, making the future of the Ghostbusters sequel hazy.
Will Sony be determined in continuing on, just like it has with its Spider-Man films? The only difference is that Spider-Man still makes a lot of money for the studio, even though it has been fumbling with the franchise from film to film. This resulted in it teaming up with Marvel Studios, under Disney, with Spider-Man: Homecoming.
A rep has mentioned that the studio wants to work on an animated Ghostbusters film for a 2019 release and an animated series, “Ghostbusters: Ecto Force,” for 2018. Ivan Reitman will supervise the projects, and he’s returning to lead the Ghostbusters universe via Ghost Corps., a subsidiary focused on expanding the universe across different platforms. Former Sony Pictures head Amy Pascal was the one who championed the all-female Ghostbusters reboot by director Paul Feig. (She’s also a major factor in having Sony team up with Marvel Studios for Spider-Man: Homecoming.)
“We’re very proud of the bold movie Paul Feig made, which critics and audiences loved,” a studio rep tells THR. “It has enlivened a 30-year-old brand and put it into the modern zeitgeist. As a result, we have many ideas in the works to further exploit the ‘Ghostbusters’ universe.”
Will Feig, Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wigg, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon return for a sequel? It depends on whether they want to deal with all the drama again.
What’s Sony’s take on this?
“This loss calculation is way off,” says the Sony rep. “With multiple revenue streams, including consumer products, gaming, location-based entertainment, continued international rollout, and huge third-party promotional partnerships that mitigated costs, the bottom line, even before co-financing, is not remotely close to that number.”
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
from Nerd Reactor
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