Paul Feig, who directed the all-female “Ghostbusters” reboot, is, apparently, still sore about the box office flop and, this week, blamed the film’s failure on “anti-Hillary” Clinton sentiment, at an all-time high in 2016.
“In a discussion with Julia Cunningham on ‘The Jess Cagle Show’ on SiriusXM, Feig discussed the vocal negativity that arose following the casting of Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones as the leads of the film,” Variety reported Thursday.
Feig is convinced the failure of “Ghostbusters” should be a case study in group sexism, he told the host.
“Some really brilliant author or researcher or sociologist needs to write a book about 2016 and how intertwined [our film was] with Hillary [Clinton] and the anti-Hillary movement,” Feig said. “It was just this year where everyone went to a boiling point. I don’t know if it was [having] an African-American president for eight years [that] teed them up or something, but they were just ready to explode… By the time, in 2014 or 2015, when I announced I was going to [make] it, it started.”
Feig then, of course, blamed President Donald Trump for igniting the sexist blaze. Trump famously opined on the all-female “Ghostbusters” in an Instagram video, filmed in his Trump Tower office, well before he became president.
“They’re remaking Indiana Jones without Harrison Ford—you can’t do that!” shouted GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump said in the clip. “And now they’re making Ghostbusters with only women. What’s going on?!”
“It’s crazy how people got nuts about women trying to be in power or trying to be in positions that they weren’t normally in,” Feig added. “It was an ugly, ugly year.”
The all-female cast of “Ghostbusters” has been routinely critical of the film’s reception. Some of its stars, like comedian Leslie Jones, have often blamed Trump for the film’s failure and wondered aloud, largely on social media, about what might have happened to the Ghostbusters franchise in a world fairer to females.
The all-female “Ghostbusters,” though, wasn’t just a flop; it was an epic failure for Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Variety reports that the company is estimated to have lost more than $50 million in revenue from the failed “Ghostbusters” female film franchise — a number limited only by Sony’s partnership on the project with Village Roadshow, which absorbed an additional $25 million loss.
At one point, before original director Ivan Reitman’s son Jason Reitman moved in to help save “Ghostbusters” with a “sequel” of sorts, “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” which focuses on the world following “Ghostbusters II,” Sony Pictures was set to scrap the Ghostbusters franchise altogether, potentially launching an animated feature or a streaming cartoon after the company recovered from the sheer embarrassment of the all-female reboot.
“They will go the animation route now and do the best they can with that,” one source close to Sony’s internal discussion on the matter told Variety at the time. “I can’t imagine why they would even think about a live-action sequel.”
“Ghostbusters: Afterlife” will premiere in theaters in 2021.
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