Dan Aykroyd defends the all-female “Ghostbusters” reboot: 'I loved so much of it'
The 2016 film starring Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones was the target of a lot of online hate.
Dan Aykroyd is not here for your all-female Ghostbusters besmirchment.
In an interview with PEOPLE, the OG 1984 Ghostbusters star and co-writer defended the 2016 reboot, which was hounded by misogynist trolls before it even saw the light of a theater release.
Columbia Pictures / courtesy Everett Collection
'Ghostbusters'"I liked the movie [director] Paul Feig made with those spectacular women," Aykroyd said. "I was mad at them at the time because I was supposed to be a producer on there and I didn't do my job and I didn't argue about costs. And it cost perhaps more than it should, and they all do. All these movies do."
The film cost $144 million and went on to make $229.1 million at the global box office, with the film's financial loss estimated at about $70 million. Though the 2016 film counts as the second-highest grossing Ghostbusters film, behind the 1984 original, it was also the most expensive, costing nearly twice as much as 2021's Ghostbusters: Afterlife.
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"But boy, I liked that film," Aykroyd continued. "I thought that the villain at the end was great. I loved so much of it. And of course, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones and Melissa McCarthy and Kristen Wiig, you're never going to do better than that. So I go on the record as saying I'm so proud to have been able to license that movie and have a hand and have a part in it, and I'm fully supportive of it, and I don't besmirch it at all. I think it works really great amongst all the ones that have been made."
Related: The cast of Ghostbusters: Where are they now?
Just the announcement of an all-female Ghostbusters sparked a backlash as did the trailer, leading it to become, at the time, the most disliked trailer in YouTube history. Though the film itself garnered solid reviews, the audience score sat at a dismal 49 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
McCarthy and the rest of the cast expressed their disappointment in the chilly and downright cruel reception, with the Spy star opining in 2021, "I don't get the fight to see who can be the most negative and the most hate-filled. Everybody should be able to tell the story they want to tell. If you don't want to see it, you don't have to see it."
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