Ghostbusters has been out for a bit now, and a new story from The Hollywood Reporter says that the movie is going to lose millions. As a result, a sequel has been put on the back burner — but Ghostbusters isn’t quite dead yet.
According to the story, Ghostbusters has to make $US300 million (388 million) to break even. While its current box office is hovering around $US180 million ($233 million). The Hollywood Reporter says the eventual loss could be in $US70 million ($90 million) range — even though Sony argues that the bottom line is nowhere near that big once you include merchandising, product tie-ins, games, et cetera. Either way, it definitely seems like the movie wasn’t the bonafide hit that the studio was hoping for.
Which boils down to everyone being a lot less vocal about a sequel than they used to be. Instead of commenting directly on the sequel, a studio representative told The Hollywood Reporter that Sony was “very proud” of the movie and has resulted in the studio having “many ideas in the works to further exploit the Ghostbusters universe”.
One of which is getting animated show Ghostbusters: Ecto Force, which was announced earlier, out in 2018 and planning an animated movie for 2019. Both are being steered by Ivan Reitman and his Ghostbusters-centred group Ghost Corps.
It makes sense that Sony’s not going to give up on an attempt to turn Ghostbusters into a signature franchise for it going forward. It also makes business sense to funnel resources into the animated format, which has been successful for Ghostbusters before. What absolutely sucks is that there are going to be people who say that the movie failed because it starred four women.